At the bottom of the hill we both bathed in the little torrent that waters the beautiful valley; at times it is two or three hundred yards wide, and again compressed so much as only just to leave room to let the stream through. Its chilly bracing foam sent a sparkle through us as if bathing in soda water, and we may boast of having had such a bath as few can enjoy, unsurpassed for its freshness, and in the very heart of the southern Rocky mountains, perhaps a spot never seen by any other white men.
August 6th, Trinidad. The loss of mules, a few terrific passes, and here and there a valley of extreme beauty brought us to the western ridge of the chain of mountains leading down to Trinidad, a little old, worn-out place, having only some few hundred inhabitants, the town itself containing some stores like those we have come across everywhere from Davis's Rancho to Jesus Maria. At Trinidad there are three Frenchmen, one the Alcalde, the other two traders, dealing in everything from horses to a single tallow candle. They also sell quantities of muscalle, which is taken mainly for the love of the alcohol, for any dose of medicine would be as palatable, and in this hot country probably more beneficial, certainly less injurious. I asked one of the Frenchmen, now so long a resident that he had almost forgotten his own language, what induced him to live in such a country. His answer was short and to the point: "The love of gold." "Have you found it?" I asked. "No," was his reply, "but I cannot return without it." So it is with many of all nations, who, lured by the stories of fortunes easily made, come to this part of the earth and grow more and more lazy and indolent, until they have become unfit for the active, energetic industry requisite in happier and more enlightened portions of the world. The people here simply vegetate; many of them drink, and are depraved in many ways. Some seem happy with their Mexican wives, who, however, are neither as handsome nor as clever as quadroons.
Nature is beautiful at every turn, now in bird and beast, then in tree and flower, then in rock and rill: how pained I am to pass them all by; but the position into which I have been forced demands every hour, and I am never my own master.
August 8th. Santa Rosa. Today I passed three partridges and two doves, warblers and flycatchers without number, all new, and many most beautiful. Santa Rosa where we are camped is a beautifully situated little village, with a silver mine as its chief interest. There are some fine horses here, possessing more of the Arabian look than any I have seen before in Mexico. With great regret, I exchanged my old favorite Monterey for a mare here worth six or eight dollars. With all my care of Monterey, I could not save his back, and I felt as if parting with a friend, when with his majestic stride, his ears set forward, giving to his small head and curved neck an expression of excitement and fierceness peculiarly his own, he almost sailed through our camp, and winding down a pass leading to the village, left me gazing at the spot where I had seen him last. There is fine grass and plenty of water, and I was told he had gone to a kind master, an Englishman who had drifted out here.
August 10th. We left our camp after great difficulty in getting our mules together, and at six camped again, fifteen miles only, on our way, for it has been up and down hill all the time. The sunny side of the hills is always very hot to us, and trying to our poor mules. We passed many changes of vegetation but musquit is still the prominent portion. One tree we saw had a large fruit five or six inches long, hanging like a pear; it contained seed, laid in like those of the milkweed, and we were told the cotton-like substance which enclosed the seeds was used for candlewick. Here we saw the first large cacti I had seen of the cylindrical form; some of them are apparently forty feet high. If in a shaded situation, they have only one or two shoots, while others in open ground have perhaps fifty, but smaller and less luxuriant, being only six or eight inches in diameter, instead of four or more.
August 11th. Coming down the creek our second day's descent we opened into a wide arroyo of sometimes two hundred yards, with water running through it, and again the water disappeared and the dry parched bottom sent up a heat such as I do not recollect having ever felt before. I saw the men fag, get down and tumble on the grass at the sides, whenever a shady spot could be found, and the poor mules seemed completely exhausted. Many of us became sick at our stomachs from the effects of the intense contrast in temperature, for we had left an atmosphere like that of Maine, for the tropics. We saw a storm coming up and for once wished it to hasten; but we had no rain, only a gust of its cooling breeze, and we gladly left our trying surroundings for a delightful shade and green grass.
August 14th. We have had the same sort of travelling today; we came to the Yaqui River, a muddy stream at this season, about two hundred yards wide and so deep that we had to employ canoes to carry over our cargoes; the canoes are paddled by Mexicans (no great boatmen, by the way); the mules and horses we swam over, having passed Tomochi [Tonichi]; the little town is said to be four days' travel from Ures; it is about three quarters of a mile from the river, and it is a deserted mining place of a few adobe houses. Here, as usual, was sold muscalle, a few freholes [frejoles][19] and wheaten tortillas. Only once have I seen pulque, at a small distillery of muscalle.
August 15th. Soyopa. Leaving the Rio Yaqui for its little tributaries, which are sometimes above ground, and sometimes below, running over the sands, or disappearing underneath them, we encamped in a quiet cool spot, to rest after the great heat of the sunny sides of the hills we had left and the arroyos made by mountain torrents where we were nearly suffocated, and we look forward to the plains of the Gulf of California and the sea breeze that sweeps them, with anticipations of delight. Alas! an occasional thunderstorm is all that gives coolness to the atmosphere here, for the puffs of land breeze only tantalize and do not cool.
I tried here to buy or trade horses, and regret I did not get one I saw, but the straightened circumstances of the company compelled me to give up the idea.
August 17th. We passed a large rancho of about a hundred and fifty men and their squaws, for nearly all were Indians, and camped six miles further on; but as night came on thieves came too, whether Mexicans or Apaches I know not, but we have never encountered bolder ones. Hinckley, Havens, Sloat, Valentine and Boggs were on guard, all good men, but of no avail, four double barrelled guns and two pistols were taken, one from under Boggs' very eyes—how, no one could tell. We looked for the trail and found it, large feet and small moccasins and barefooted; but the dew was unswept from the grass outside the camp, so the theft must have been earlier in the night: we could recover nothing, though four of our best men went back; so after a fruitless search of some hours we left for Ures, and at three o'clock entered into a series of hills and valleys so beautiful in form and color, so fresh and green that our spring could not equal them. Many of Cole's[20] pictures were brought to mind.