COCHISE.
Beyond the plains the travelers came to a mass of “cañons, ravines, ridges, gullies, chasms, and mountains,” some of them presenting the appearance of exquisitely constructed Gothic cathedrals, while one so exactly resembled an organ, with pipes of green, white, blue, brown, and pink sandstone, that Cozens could scarcely believe it to be merely a natural phenomenon.
The Indian trail led into the very midst of this chaos of rocks, and, breathlessly following his guide, our hero presently found himself upon the edge of a pass, looking down a precipice two thousand feet in depth, with perpendicular walls of a blood-red color, relieved at their summits with patches of grayish white alkali. Cochise now made signs to his employer—master Cozens could scarcely be called—to dismount and leave his mule to find its own way down. Then with one word, “Adelante!” (Forward!), he led the way down the pass.
Descending into the gloom beneath the overhanging rock-masses, and feeling their way step by step in the darkness, with the mules so close behind them that a moment’s hesitation would have been certain death—for the animals would assuredly have pushed their masters over the abyss—the adventurers at last reached in safety the bed of the river, which had eaten out the pass of which they had availed themselves. Here a halt was made for the night, and on the ensuing day the descent of the ravine was completed, under difficulties even greater than those already conquered.
Late in the afternoon, however, Cochise pointed out four or five black specks in the distance, perched on the strange truncated mounds so common in Arizona, and which have excited so much curiosity among scientific men. “They are Apaches,” was the guide’s laconic remark; and though Cozens pressed him with eager questions as to the next experiences to be anticipated, he could get no replies.
Silently the two plodded on for another two hours till they came to the summit of a bare bluff, when Cochise again paused, and, pointing to the valley beneath, exclaimed, “Look! Apache home!” Cozens obeyed, and, gazing down upon a lovely valley, watered by a copious stream, and surrounded on all sides by bluffs some hundred feet high, their surfaces worn by wind and weather into all manner of strange forms, he obtained his first glimpse of the goal of his journey.
The Apache huts, with yellow thatched, dome-shaped roofs, nestled here and there against the crags, or in little groups by the stream; from before each door rose the smoke of a little camp-fire; and beyond, on the slopes of the upper end of the valley, grazed thousands of cattle, ponies and mules.
As the two gazed motionless upon this scene of peace and plenty in the wilderness, they were suddenly perceived by the Indians. A loud yell notified the fact, and in a moment the village was astir; children running together, dogs barking, warriors hastily seizing their weapons. But Cochise, the wandering war-chief, raised his hand and gave utterance to a peculiar cry. He was recognized at once, the arms were thrown aside, and, quickly descending the bluff, the two travelers were received by a set of men whom Cozens characterizes as the most degraded-looking creatures he had ever seen. The women especially, he says, “were ugly, fat and dirty,” and nowhere did he see any of the beautiful squaws described in the works of Cooper, the [♦]romanticist of the Indians.
[♦] ‘romancist’ replaced with ‘romanticist’