As soon as we were well up in the mountains we found the region extremely well watered, beautiful streams flowing through every little glen or valley, many of them filled with small trout. This Batopilas trail differed from the other in that some attempt at grade had been made. It did not adopt the erratic Indian method of making for the top of every tall peak and then climbing down on the other side, only to repeat the performance until the rider became almost seasick from the undulations. Since Batopilas came into the hands of Americans there has been a constant effort on their part to look for better grades and secure a simpler method of ingress and egress from their mountain mines, and they are continually broadening and improving the path. Still, at the best, they can never make anything but a narrow mountain trail in that country of crag and cañon. The day will come when railways are built through that rich region, but until then the patient mule will be the only means of transportation.
The first night on the Teboreachic was a most delightfully cool one after the long spell of warm weather we had experienced on the lower levels. It was preceded by a slight thunder shower, the first one of the season, but it warned us in unmistakable terms that the rainy season was not far off, and that we had better get out of the mountains before it was upon us. Before making La Laja, the second night, we passed the homes of many Indians, both of the semi-civilized type and the wilder ones of the cliffs and caves. At one point I stopped to get a photograph of the homes of some cliff dwellers, where, directly below the cliffs, were a couple of rude stone huts, built on a steep side of the mountain. The men seemed to be absent from this place, but we could see the forms of some women moving about and crouching down to avoid being seen by us. My Mexican man, Dionisio, was greatly alarmed at my action in dropping behind the party to photograph this group of strange homes, and loudly declared we would all be shot by the men, should they return and see us at this, to them, strange work. It was almost impossible to induce Dionisio to bring up my camera or hold my mule, so anxious was he to get away. There was really no danger whatever from these people, as they only fight to defend their homes, but the fear of the cowardly Mexican was very amusing.
HOMES OF SEMI-CIVILIZED TARAHUMARIS.
Before leaving Batopilas we had been told that whatever we had seen of the wonderful or beautiful in nature on our outward journey by other trails, a treat of a most magnificent character was reserved for us on this route, one that was unique and wholly without parallel in those grand old mountains. This was the day's journey through the Arroyo de las Iglesias. So we were in a measure prepared for the many beautiful sights that awaited us on our third day. Although we had been passing through picturesque valleys and were constantly crossing lovely mountain brooks, one must admit without hesitation that of the many hundreds of beautiful streams in the Sierra Madre Mountains, flanked by cut and carved stone, there is none that will compare in extent or beauty with the sculptured rock of the Arroyo de las Iglesias (the Cañon of the Churches), so named on account of the spires of rock that greet one on every side for the greater part of a day's travel. For eighteen or twenty miles the Cañon of the Churches seems more like some theatrical representation of a fairy scene than a real one from nature. The limestone has been eroded into a thousand fantastic forms by the action of the elements, the predominating one being some feature of a church or cathedral, either in spires, minarets, or flying buttresses built far out from the main walls of the cañon. The most grotesque forms are those that generally cap the spires; it seems necessary that some hard rock above should protect the softer underneath in order to insure one of these petrified pinnacles of nature.
One of them, two hundred feet in height, as seen from the cañon, was as good a spread eagle as a person would want to see cut out of stone, while on a tower not a hundred yards away was a bust of Hadrian, quite as good as that in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ten times as large, and a thousandfold more conspicuously placed. A person with a small amount of imagination could easily make a land of enchantment out of this arroyo with its singular columns and pillars, its leaning towers and busts and statues, that meet him on every side and are repeated every few hundred yards by great cañons that break off to the right and left, and which are perfect duplicates of the original through which the traveler wends his way.
Strange, singular, and curious as are these works of nature, they are not so astonishing to the average civilized person as the works of man. Among these beetling crags and dizzy cliffs savage men have found places to erect their houses and live their lives. Ladders of notched sticks lead from one crag to the crest of another, whenever the rude steps made by nature do not allow these creatures of the cliffs to climb their almost perpendicular faces; a false step on the slight ladders or a turning of one of them, which to me seemed so likely, would send the climber two hundred to three hundred feet to the bottom of the cañon, perhaps a mangled corpse.