Much as I would have liked to visit the place, the condition of my mules and the state of my provisions made it clearly out of the question; moreover, I was informed that better chances to see cliff dwellers would present themselves before long, which statement, fortunately, was soon verified. Not far from Camp Diaz was a place where we could have tied our braided horsehair lariats together and let a person down one hundred to two hundred feet into the tops of some tall pine trees, and from there gain the first incline, which, though dizzily steep, I think would have led, by a little Alpine engineering, into the bottom of the big barranca four or five thousand feet below, and thence an ascent could be made to the caves of the cliff dwellers. But there were other and more potent considerations, which I have given, that prevented our attempting this acrobatic performance with the cliffs and crags as spectators. We might say that we were now out of the land of the living cave dwellers and in the land of the living cliff dwellers, although the latter live in caves in the cliffs. But I make the distinction between the two, of caves on the level of the ground in the valleys or the sides of mountains, and the caves in cliffs or walls. The latter are reached by notched sticks used as ladders, or, as I saw in a few cases, by natural steps in the strata of alternate hard and soft rock, and up which nothing but a monkey or a Sierra Madre cliff dweller could ascend. Many of these cliff houses in the caves and great indentations are one hundred to two hundred feet above the water of some mountain stream, over which they hang like swallows' nests. Truly they are a most wonderful and interesting people, well worth a large volume or two to describe all that is singular and different in them from other people, savage or civilized.
IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING CLIFF DWELLERS.
One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the Sierra Madre range, and one that will attract widespread admiration in the near future when this country is better known, is its wonderful rock sculpture. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that I passed hundreds of isolated sculptured rocks in one day. All sketches fail to give an idea of these beautiful formations. They must be seen to afford a conception of their beauty and grotesqueness. Undoubtedly they outrank all other ranges of North America and, as far as I can learn, of the whole world. Even the Garden of the Gods in Colorado is flat in comparison with some of the many miles of glorious rock formations in these grand old mountains. The trail from Camp Diaz to our fifth camp in the Arroyo de los Angelitos along the western side of the Grand Barranca of the Urique, was as picturesque as the most poetical imagination could conceive. The trail wound up and down the steep arroyos and along the edge of the high cliffs, giving views of unsurpassed beauty and grandeur. That night we slept for the last time under the somber pines and listened to the whip-poor-wills, for the next night we had descended seven thousand feet, and were among the oranges and palms, the paroquets and humming birds.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
| IN SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA—DOWN THE URIQUE BARRANCA—FROM PINE TO PALM—URIQUE AND ITS MINES. |