CiHM Microfiche Series (l\/lonographs) ICI\/IH Collection de microfiches (monographies) Canadian Instituta for Hiatorical Mkroraproductiona / Inst. tut Canadian da microraproductiona hittoriqua* 1996 Technical and Bibliographic Notes / Notes technique et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographlcally unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming are checked below. D D D D D D D D D D D Coloured covers / Couverture de coulet Covers dimaged / Couverture endommagee Coveis restored arwl/or laminated / Couverture restauree et/ou pellicula Cover title missing / Le titre de couverture manque Coloured maps / Cartes geographiques en couleur Coloured lnl( (i.e. other than i^lue or blacl<) / Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) Coloured plates and/or illustrations / Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material / Reliu avec d'autres documents Only edition available / Seule edition disponible Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin / La reliure serree peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distorsion le long de la marge int^rieure. 8lanl< leaves added during restorations may iqapear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming / II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajoutees lors d'une restauration appataissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela etait possible, ces pages n'ont pas ete filmees. L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur examplaire qu'il lui a 6ti possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exem- plalre qui sont peut-6tre uniques du point de vue bibli- ographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modifications dans la m^h- ode normale de filmage sont indiqute ci-dessous. I I Coloured pages / Pages de couleur I I Pages damaged / Pages endommagees I I Pages restored and/or laminated / ' — ' Pages restaur^es et/ou pelllcuiees r/| Pages discoloured, stained or foxed / ^^ Pages decdorees, tacfwtees ou piquees I I Pages detached / Pages detachees [^ Showthrough/ Transparence r^ Quality of print varies / ' — ' Qualite inigale de I'impression r~] Includes supplementary material / ' — ' Comprend du materiel suppiementaire I I Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata ' — ' slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image / Les pages totalement ou pattiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont Hi filmees ^ nouveau de fa;on d obtenir la mellleure image possible. I I Opposing pages with varying colouration or ' — ' discolourations are filmed twice to ensure the best possible image / Les pages s'opposant ayant des colorations variables ou des decol- orations sont filmees deux fois afin d'obtenir la meilleur image possible. D Addtional comments / Commentairss suppldmentaires: Thii itwn is filmad at the rKluction ratio chacktd bakmr/ Ct documant tst ftlmi au taux de rMuction indiiiiii ci-dancHn. 1SX 14X 1IX ax 26X KX y ■ 12 X 1«X 20X 24 X 28X 32X Tha copy filmad hara has baan raproducad thanks to tha ganarosity of: National Library of Canada L'axamplaira film* fut raproduit gr«ca i la gintrositA da: Blbllotheque natlonale du Canada Tha imagss sppaaring hara ara tha bast quality possibis considaring tha condition and Isgibility of tha original copy and in kaaping with tha filming contract spacifieationa. Las imagas suivantas ont M raproduitas avac is plus grsnd soin, compta tsnu da la condition si da la nattat* da I'axsmplaira fiimi, at sn conformit* avac laa conditions du contrat ds filmaga. Original copias in printad papsr covara ara fllmad baginning with tha front eovar and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad impras- sion, or tha back covar whan appropriata. All othar original copiaa ara fllmad baginning on tha first paga with a printad or illustratad impraa- aion. and anding on tha last paga with a printad or llluatratad imprassion. Tha last racordad frama on aaeh mlcrofieha shall contain tha symbol — ^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol V (moaning "END"), whichavar applias. Mapa, platas, charu. ate. may ba fllmad at diffarant rsduction ratios. Thosa too larga to ba sntiraly includsd in ona sxposura ara fllmad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar, lafl to right and top to bonom, as many framas as raquirad. Tha following diagrams illuslrsia tha mathod: Laa axamplairaa originaux dont la couvartura sn papiar aat ImprimOa sont fiimOs sn commancant par la pramiar plat at an tarminant soit par Is darnitra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'Imprassion ou d'lllustration, soit par la sscond plat, salon la caa. Tous las sutras axsmplairas originaua sent fllmOs sn commsncant par la pramMra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'Impraasion ou d'lllustration at an tarminant par la darnitra paga qui comporta una taila amprainta. Un daa symbolos suivants tpparaltra sur la darniira imaga da chaqua microficha. salon la cas: la symbols ^m- signifis "A SUIVRE". la symboio V signifis "FIN". Lss cartas, planchas. Mblsaux. ate. pauvant itre filmto A das uux da rMuction diffiranis. Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour Strs rsproduit an un saul clichS. 11 ast film* 1 psrtir da I'angia supAriaur gaucha, da gaucha S droita. at da haut an bas. an pranant la nombra d'imagaa nOcassaira. Las diagrammas suivants illustrant la mOthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 wctocorr iisoiution tbt chart (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No- 7) 1.0 I.I |23 12.2 |Z0 11.8 1:25 i 1.4 1^ i^ 111^ A i /IPPLIED INA^GE In, 1653 Ea*> Main 3tr«T RoctiMlBr. Ntw Torh 1 (716) *82-OWO-Pnon (716) 2Sf - 59B9 -Fo. BY PATH AND TRAIL DEAN HARRIS PUBLISHERS CHICAGO NEWSPAPER UNION CHICAGO i9oa To MV IIKAR FI<[KN1) K K V. H(, : 1.; ;;t KER mCTOHOl- ST. CATHAR,M-s AN,. CUA.M.AIN TO THE ,.TH REGIMENT I DEDICATE THIS KEIOKD OP MY THAVEI.S ■•BV PATH AND TKAIL" CONTENIS. HIAI-lKU I. Vaq* OllK.'X Of THE FIOIITINO VAylltK S ClIAI'IKIl II. OXrilK WAY TO THE DAKllANI^A 13 VIIAI'IHIl III. HATTLK OF THE ELEMENTS 20 Cll.lfTllIt ;i VAIXKV OF THE CIICIIOIIKS 3g CH.iPTKR y. FKIEXn OF THE MOUXTAINEEIl gg CHAPTER VI THE lilXXEIiS OF THE SIERllA 45 CHAPTER ril, THE I'iilEST AX^) THE YACJI'IS 57 CHAPTER Mil. WHEia: .MAX KNTEItS AT Ills I'EItll ,17 VII CONTIf N i\ VU.MTKU I.X. Tllli IIHAII OF TlIK IIKMKUT. . . . 7j OIIM-TKU A. TOW M(JJJT KDIl LIKK... 8.J Till.) •IlKJUl.u INDIANS'. Ul VUAfTi:i! XII. JBHIIITB AND Ul(;(ii:u INDIANS vaArriii! .\iii. TIIK VAOA DK I.IJ.MIlltK. I(J!) CUAPTEIt XIV. TOK I'KADEBA AND (iUANO PKDS OD.U'Ti:it XV. OBIOIN Of rilE "PIOUS FUND" in cH.inr.H XVI. IE or THB GltAMC.. 135 CHAPTER XVII. IF THE NEW TES-l'AMKNT Till TIIB I SOI, CONTiNTS. rllM'ir.ll will. A L.».\I) OK sciiMc u-DViir.iis I II trrri: .\i\. vt:(;KTATio.\ OF nii: iikskut „„ '■II AIT I It ,\\, TK.MI'l.i:s OK THE l)KSi;i;-|' niM'IKll XXI. A .■II111A€LK OK .NATi;iU; IIIAPTEU .\.\ll. Tin; IMCK-IIISTOHIC III'IN iii.\ni:R .will. A <-|TV IN- TUB DKsKliT ril.tinim xxn. CAMP OK THK COXSlMI-rn-Ks ,^,. rii.M'Tr.it XXV. THE OSTItK.H KAItM iz i^} ILLUSTRATIONS. Facing r'Ac..t romains and Imnd down to an unprivileged futnr,. ,, .io.s.Tiption and a vcr- bal photograph of what the country was in days gone by. J.ower California, Sonora and the illimitable pine forests of the Chihuahua lia,,,,, ..f the Sierras Madres yet ren-a.n in their primitivo isolation and magnificent savngery, but, before our ccnlury expires, the immense solitudes, the unbroken desolation of wilderness and the me ancholy fascination which belong to the lonely desert and towering mountain and to sustained and unbroken silence will be no more. Vale, rale, aelcrnc valc-.^ooi- by, s:o(>d.by for pvermnrc. ■\\- j. °rT CHAPTEB I. OBIQIN OF THE PIOHTINO YA"«««• A new terror is added to the situation in the Sonora country since the Yaqms have learned the deadly nature of the pLoa wh,ch ,s so largely used in mining operations and Tso easdy accessible to desperadoes like the Yaquis." La to m Decern er, Um, I read in another paper published L l„r V I ""™"^'"S band of Yaquis entered the vil- lage of Leneho, killed six men and two women and wounded four other Mexicans. As soon as the firing was heard at Torin. three miles from where the massaefe^c curred and where 2,000 troops are stationed, General Lorenzo Torres took the field in pursuit of the S' The soldiers w,Il remain out until the Indians are killed or captured." Killed or captured! Well, for 400 years of known time the Spanish or Mexican troops have, with occasional periods of truce, been killing and ca. ' . this solitary tribe, and strange to relate the warri - , the tnbe will not stay killed or captured. On June i2 • Br PATH AKD ■nuh. 1908 a Gnaymag morning paper published tlii, di.- patch: A special from Hermosillo, .ay. 4,000 Mei- lean .oldien. under the pergonal command of Gen Lorenzo Torres, are in the country .n hot pursuit of the 1 u. Indians. All negotiations looking toward the 8ig"'«g of the peace treaty were suddenly broken off this afternoon. The yu<,uis insisted on retaining their arms and ammunition, after having acceded to every other stipulation of the Mexican government. The Mexi- can officers stood steadfast, and the Yaquis withdrew from the conference. Immediately orders were dis- patched to the Mexican troops in the field to resume hos- ong as the Mexican troops have all the wafer holes in tue Ifaqm country surrounded." Hi„™'-"'t''«'f*^*'' '""'"' °" """^ "ff- *!"> Mexican sol- W?)i° '•»'*«1."'°»' "O'npaniefi and isolated commands have been chasing through the mountains these stubborn and half-civil^ed fighters. In the few last years the Ifaqms have become more dangerous and daring, more rZ7 ^T.*""! "*"""'' °' •'"'«='^- "mraensc region, in what is now northwest- th^ AM h"' """ i""'™""' ''■■ " «'■*"' """o" known as the Athasbascan, from which the territory of Atl, .basca and the great river flowing through it take their names. One division of this numerous nation are known to-day as Tinnes or Dinn^s, and may have been so called in ■Y MTH AXO TBAIL. 9 tboM early days. For aome cause unknown to na, a tribal family, numbering perhaps a thousand, quarreled with their kinsmen or became dissatisfied with their lands, separated from their brothers and went in quest of new hunting grounds. They crossed a continent, pass- ing in peace through the lands of other tribes and cut- ting a passage for themselves through hostile nations. Tliey arrived at last, it may be in a hundred, two hun- dred years, in the land now known as New Mexico and Arizona, possessed and tilled by an agricultural and peaceable people, differing in customs, manners, super- "'•tions, and in origin and language. They decided tj settle here. The Zuni, Moki, Yumas— call them what we may— contested the right of the Dlnnis to live in their country. The invaders, compared to the established na- tions, were few in numbers, but they were trained fight- ers. They were lanky men of toughened fibre and mus- cle, the sons of warrior sires who had fought their way through tribe, clan and nation, and willed to their sons and grandsons their only estate and property, courage, endurance, agility, strategy in war and cunning in the fight. The Dfrnis, let us call them by their modern name the Apaches, woefully outclassed in numbers by the people upon whose lands they had intruded, were wise. Fighting in the open, if they lost but ten men in battle and the Zuni and Moki lost forty, in the end the Zuni and Moki must win out. The Apaches took to the mountains. The Zuni had no stomach for mountain fighting. The Apaches raided their villages, attacked like lions and disappeared like birds. They swept the Salt Eiver valley clean and where at one time there was a sedentary population of 50,000 or 60,000 then was now a desert. Those of the original owners who escaped fled D- I'll 10 BY PATH AND TRAIL. to the recesses and dark places of the Grand canyon or to the inaccessible cliffs where the Spaniards found them and called them "burrow people," and where hundreds of years afterward the Americans discovered them and christened them "cliff dwellers." There are no records on stone or paper to tell us when these thing happened; there is no tradition to in- form us when the Dlnnfe entered the land or when the devastation began. We only know that when the Span- iards came into Arizona in 1539, the "Casa Grande " the great house of the last of the early dwellers, was' a venerable ruin. , »= a The Apaches now increased and multiplied, they spread out and divided into tribes. One division trav- eled south and settled along the slopes of the Bacatete mountams and in the valley of a river to which they gave their name. When this settlement took place we do not know, we only know that when Father Marcos de Nizza entered Sonora, the first of white men, in 1539, this tribe ot the Apaches called themselves Yaqui, and possessed I Tf: .? '"'" '"'" '"'° understand why the Spaniards found the Yaqms tough customers to deal with and why the Mexicans after sixty years of intermittent war have not yet conquered them. The Yaqui claims descent from the wolf, and he has all the qualities and characteristics ot the wolf to make good his claim. Centuries of training in starvation, of exposure to burning heat, to thirst, to mountain storms and to suffer- ing have produced a man almost as hardy as a cactus, as fertile m defense, as swift of foot and as distinctly a type of the wilderness and the desert as his brothe- the coyote. "' From the earliest Spanish records we learn that this BY PATH AND TBAIL. 11 fierce tribe resisted the intrusion and settlement in tlieir country of any foreign race. One of the conditions of a treaty made with them by the early Spaniards permitted the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the counti-y. Villages were built and camps established from time to time, but when the Yaquis or Mexicans broke the peace, these camps and towns were left desolate. It is impossible, for one who has not seen Sonora to imagine the ravages wrought in a country for which na- ture has done so much.' The name "Infelix"— unhappy— given to it by the early missionary fathers, iu sympathy with its misfor- tunes, was portentous of its miseries. Ti'c ravages of the Yaquis were everywhere visible a few years ago, and in many places, even to-day, the marks of their ven- geance tell of their ferocity. By small parties and by secret passes of the mountains they sweep down upoii, surprise and attack the lonely traveler or train of trav- elers or a village, slaughter the men and carry off the women and children. Then, in their mountain lairs and in the security of isolation, the mothers are separated from their children and the children incorporated into the tribe, and in time become Yaqui mothers and Yaqul warriors. This is tiie secret of the vitalitv and perpe- tuity of the Yaqui tribe. If it were not for this practice of stealing children and incorporating them into the tril)al body, the Yaquis would long ago have been anni- hilated. Marcial, Benevidea, Bandalares, prominent Yaqui chiefs, were child captives and manv of their council and war chiefs are half-breeds. And now here is an extraordinary, and, perhaps, an unprecedented fact in the history of the human race outside of the Ottoman empire. Of the Indians warring against a civilized and 12 BY PATH AXD TRAIL. a White nation, one-third are whites, one-half half-castes and many of the rest carry in their veins white blood. On the other hand, the civilized troops who now, and for the past fifty years, have been waging war on the Yaquis, following them to their haunts, hunting them in the fast^ npsa of their mountain, are all Indians and half-breeds CHAPTER II. ON THE WAY TO THE BABBANCA. To the traveler from the northern and eastern regions of America, }f' xico is and always will be a land of en- chantment, lio weird and romantic history, its imfa- miliar and gorgeously flowering vines, its thorny and mysteriously protected plants called cacti, its strange tribes of unknown origin, its towering mountains, vol- canoes and abysses of horrent depths prepare the mind for the unexpected and for any surprise. Still, the stag- gering tales I heard here, at Guaymas, of the wonders of the Gran Barranca and the matchless scenery of the Sierra Madre gave me pause. The Sierras Madres are a range of mountains forming the backbone of Mexico, from which all the other ridges of this great country stretch away, and to which all isolated spurs and solitary mountains are related. This stupendous range of moun- tains probably rose from the universal deep, like the Laurentian granites, when God said ' , there be light, and light was," and will remain till lue Mighty Angel comes down from heaven and "swears by Him that liv- eth forever, that time shall be no more." From the breasts and bosom of this tremendous range rise mountains of individual grentness, towering one above the other. Here are sublime peaks of imperishable material that lift their spires into ethereal space, and whose snow roofed sides receive and reflect the rays of an eternal sun. Here, also, are horrent gorges which ter- rify the gaze — vast abysses where there is no day and where eternal silence reigns; dead volcanoes whose era- 1 . I 14 BY PATH ANU TRAIL. TrlT ^ . i'T "^ emptiness and whose sides are npped and gashed down to the very foothills, black with lava and strewn with scoriae. Of the time when these ^Kbty h.ns belched forth flame and fire, reverbe ated with explosive gases, and the crash of the elements that rocked the earth and sent down scoriae torrents which devoured life and overwhelmed and effaced vallevs no sl^r T-J^"t '^^""'^^ ^^^ P"^' "f «>« ^""derful flotrt^."^. *'''/*"*'' "^ Chihuahua and Sonera, flow.s, through depths immeasurable to man, the Urique river, whose flow when in flood is an ungovernable tor- rent, and when in repose is a fascination Thousands of years ago the streams and rivulets formed by the thawing of the mountain snow on h^ Sierra s crests and slopes zigzagged, now here, now there searching a path to the sea. On their seaward race they were joined by innumerable recruits, springs issuing from the erevassed rocks, brooks stealing away f"om dark recesses, runlets, rills and streamlet?, till I Z the confederate waters became a formidable river w i"h "tt l!^\ T'' ""'^ ^" '"'*°''^ ^Ses there has been no let up to Its merciless and tireless onslaught on the porphyr-tic and sandstone walls that in the dark ages till 7Z ^' "PP"'' " "S'"* °f ^^>-' »°<1 i°to their bre sts of adamant it has cut a frightful gash of varying width and, m places, more than a mile deep. This aw ful wound IS known as the Gran Bai-ranca, and with il weird settmgs amid terrifying solitides is perhap the greatest natural wonder in America ' fl^^" tf'J ^^^ ^'"'"' Canyon'of Arizona, and am famihar with Niagara Fails and its wondrous g^rge, b„^ BY PATH AND TBAIL. 15 now, that I have returned after passing eight days amid the towering peaks, the perpendicular walls, the frightful abysses, the dark and gloomy depths of precipitous can- yons, and, above all, the immense and awful silence of the Great Barranca, I confess I feel like one who has come out of an opiate sleep and doubts he is yet awake From the quaint and tropical town of Guaymas on the Gulf of Califomia-stiU called by the Mexicans the Gulf of Cortez— I began my .ioumey for the Gran Barranca. A mpanied by a Mayo guide I joined, by invitation, the party of Don Alonzo Espinosa, who, with his son and daughter, was leaving to visit his mine in the La Dura range. With us went four rifle bearing Yaquis, Chris- tianized members of the fierce mountain tribe that has given and is yet giving more trouble to the Mexican gov- ernment than all the Indians of the republic. The distance from Guaymas to the Gran Barranca IS about 200 miles, and it is idle to say that through these rough mountain lands, there are no railroads, no stages nor indeed facilities for tra>-el save on foot or mule back. Noble and serviceable as the horse may be no one here would dream of trusting his life to him on the steep and narrow trails of the Sierras. The small Mexi- can burro or donkey is as wise as a mountain goat, as sure of foot as a Rocky Mountain sheep, and when left to himself will, day or night, safely carrj- you by the run of the most dangerous precipice. We left Guaymas at 4 a. m. At Canoncito we met a train of loaded burros driven by men cloathed in zarapes, white cotton pants and sombreros, and, like ourselves, taking advantage of the early morning and its refreshing coolness. Now and then we passed a solitary "jackal" or hut from whose door yelling curs sallied forth to dispute our right of 16 BY PATH AND TBAIL. I '1 way We were now entering the land of the cactus, that mysterious plant so providentially protected against the hunger of bird or beast. Bristling from top to root with innumerable spmes of the size and hardness of a cam- bric or dammg needle, the Mexican cactus is a living manifestation of a prescient, omnipotent and divine per- sonality. From the diminutive singa, which grows in waterless regions, and whose bark when chewed gives re- Uef to the parched tongue, to the giant Suhauro towering to he height of forty or fifty feet, and whose pulp hold! gallons ot water, the cactus in its 685 species or varieties bota^sT ™'^ """^ ° fascinating study for the q,-:^* ^ M°'r!°°'' r ^^^^ ^"^ hretiklast at the home of Signer MathiasDura^, an old and hospitable friend of Don Alonzo. H re I noticed with pleasure and edifica- outlived r'^ -f r "^^ ^P*""'' «^^«'^S ^'^ol' has outUved the vicissitudes of time and modem innovations. Mr. Duran was standing on his veranda shouting a welcome to his friend, who, dismounting, shook hands hLv ^"P "''°' '*'" '""•''°« ^'' eiiest's hand, spoke back: Para siempre benidito sea Dios y la siempre VirgmManaspaseaddante. amigo mio." (Forever !d «» '^ I T' ""T'S ^'•°'" «f"' this language sound- ed as an echo from t'.e Ages of Faith, and I ma^elled at the colloquial piety and childlike simpUcity of these cul- !n^iri 'f -^ 8e°«emen. Late that afternoon we entered the tribal lands of the Yaqui., and our armed X. ""T^^f"""* somebodies and began to preen them- selves on their courage and vigilance. And they were no ordinary men, these civilized Yaquis. On a long journey BY PATH AND TBAIL. 17 they would wear down any four men of the Japhetic stock. Of sensitive nostril, sharp ear and keen eye, noth- ing of any import passed unnoticed, and if it came to a brnsh with Mexican "hold-ups" or mountain bandits these Indian guards could be trusted to acquit themselves as brave men. Half of the fierce and one time numerous Yaquig were long ago converted to Christianity by Spanish priests and have conformed to the ways of civilized man. They work in the mines, cultivate patches of ground and are employed on the few rancheriaa and around the hacien- das to be found in Sonora. Others are in the service of the government, holding positions as mail carriers and express runners. In places almost inaccessible to man, in eeries hidden high up in the mountains, in cul-de-sacs of the canyons, are mining camps having each its own little postoffice. The office may be only a cigar box nailed to a post, or soap box on a veranda, but once a week, or it may be only once a mouth, the office receives and delivers the mail. Night or day the Yaqui mail run- ner may come, empty the box, drop in his letters, and, like a coyote, is off again for the next camp, perhaps thirty miles across the mountains. Clad only in bullhide sandals and breechclout, the Yaqui mail bearer can out- run and distance across the rough mountain trails any horse or burro that was ever foaled. Don Alonzo tells me — and I believe him — that, before the government opened the road from Chihuahua to El Eosario, a dis- tance of 500 Spanish miles (450 of ours) a Tarahumari Indian carried the mail regularly in six days, and after resting one day, returned to Cbihualiua in the same time. The path led over mountains from 4,000 to 6,000 feet high, by the rim of deep precipices, across bridgeless 18 BV PATH AND TBAIL. eaPnVtlo4";Lr' """*'' " """» "riatlin, with -dlTlS "IrplS,^^^^ «ib,e to ?s recorded by the historkr th'A 1°"^ °^ ^^^«^''"'- « ">K of the Spaniards a Z' a ,17° ""^^ ""^^ ">« 'and tona] drawings of the s rl ™ "'"'"* "f Ifcieo pio «"ail and weapons were de^.*'"■^°^ '^''" ^^ips, hor^e ~ by express r",S ;,'"''' '''^^-'^ of C: from Vera Cru^ to t l^e 'VT^'^ "^« 'li^tanee thirty-six hours. I,, .,, ,f , eap,tal_2C3 miles-in ocean 8,000 feet ...vlr """, ""-■^' "^''onded from th« r=C" ;:,-££"-.»'«.::;: narrow passages wl:en Te orr ntial"™' ''™"*'' '>^«'o oa these high pealfs anH /., '"'""'' ^^re abroad from ledge to Lei 'sSed'V"""^'' ^'^eams. iS our heads there ros; ttr i » '"''^"^ «ood, Abovf -*. but we had no Lt i'^f .f^' of porphy^ danger, no fear, no ehill. "^ "' °o foreboding of ;;here,r,:araIo;VeKs°;i ,«™o -untains, the Meza party, leaving Xir if 'l"?'^ ^'^"Sl't^ed of the massacre was brought toV^?- '^"''- ^^' '^PoH BV PATH AND TBAIL. 19 in the district, accompanied by his wife and daughters Senontas Carmen, Elvira, Eloisa and Panchetta-si^-' Senoritas Carmen, Elvira, Eloisa and Panchetta-sixteen eighteen, twenty and twenty-three years-left Ouaymas' early one morning for La Dura. At Ortiz they halted for refreshments where they were joined by Senor Theobold Uoff, his w,fe and son, a young man twenty-three years oJd. There was apparently no reason for alarm, fo"r the Mexican troops and the Yaqui warriors were fighting it out eighty miles to the east. When the Indians ambushed them, the men of the party charged desperately up the slope to draw the Yaquis' fire, shouting to the ladie. to drive on and save them- selves. The women refused to abandon the men, and when a company of Mexican Burales (mounted police) ar- rived on the scene, Pedro Meza, his family and guests were numbered with the dead. f„;t' f fJ'°^r' ". "■""'"" '''^™ '° S"'"^ " "^rief his- tory of this formidable tribe, I confine myself here to the statement that the Ya.jui.s are now and have been for the past three hundred years, the boldest and fiercest warriors within the limits of Mexico and Central Amer- 1 passed the night under the friendly roof of Don Alonzo, and eariy the next morning with my Mayo guide and companion continued my journev to the Gran Bar ranca Far away to the southeast towered the volcanic mount, the Sierra de los Ojitos, whose shaggy flanks and heaving ndges are covered with giant pines, and on whose imperial crest the clouds love to rest before they open and distribute impartially their waters between the Atlantic and the Pacitic, through the Gulfs of Mexico 20 BY PA-l.; AND TBAIL. M The trn.l now becomes steeper and nnrrower, carryinK us through an mspiring- panorama of isolated mountf .n h« H ''°<^5°'''7' bowlders standing here and there Iwil t r r-l r"'*""""! confusion. Stretchin" away to the south and extending for hundreds of miles even to the va ley of Tierra Blanca, was the groat con fo rous or pme forest of the Sierras Madres, fhe reser^Ls of the paleto deer the feeding grounds of tke peccar^or w.ld hog and he haunts of the mountain bear and the sTeTr ^7"=.''".''Pf «" «Ker. This great pine ran^e s the argest virgin forest in North America, and lor ~Sior '"' "''^-' -'' ^"" -^°- '° '- In the early Miocene age, when God was preparing nl \:^'^l'""^'''« "^ '"»»• «^'' i'^*''^* wild r tinct Ind ^ 1 ?* ^™"°' "' "''«''*y ""'"""^ "ow ex. met and, r a later period, of the fierce ancestors of those now roaming through the desolation of its solitude. The decay of forest wealth and the disintegration of Its animal 1, e eternally going on have superimposed upon the prim, ive soil a loam of inexhaustible richness Un- fortunately there is no water to river its timber, but when the t.me comes, as come it will, when its produce can be freighted this forest will be of incalcnlaWe com mercia value to Slexico, and as profitable to the republic as are her enormously rich mines. The mountains, isolated cones and the face of the ■and as we proceeded, began to assume weird and fan- ta.s ,c shapes. Wind and water chiseling, carving and cuttmg for thousands of years, have produced a pano- r. ma of architectural deceptions bewildering to man Those soulless sculptors and carvers, following a mysto- nous law of oriptir, and movemont. have evolved frr,„ BV PATH AND THAIU 21 the sandstone hills an amazing series of illusions and have cut out and fashioned monumental designs of the most curious and fantastic forms. Here are battlen.ents, towers, cathedrals, buttresses and flying buttresses Awny to our left are giant figures, great arches and ar^ chitravcs, and among heaps of debris from fallen col- umns there ,s .lourishing the wonderful madrona or strawberry tree, with blood-red bark, bright green and yellow leaves, and in season, covered with waxen white blossoms, impossible of imitation on wood or canvas The wild turkeys are calling from cliff to cliff and the wilderness is yielding food to them. The intense silence weighs upon the soul, the stupendous hills bear to the luind a sensation of awe and sublimitv. I look around me and see everywhere titanic mountains roughly garbed m hoary vegetation; the vision carrys me back to a for- mative period before time was, "when the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the waters and said let land appear." And now, as we advance, the scenery suddenly becomes grander and more sublime, surpassing great in its a^vful sohtude. Its tremendous strength and terrifying size The spirit of man, in harmony with the majesty of his surroundings and the matchless splendor of these silent ...onuments to God's creative power, ought to expand and grow large, but the soul is dwarfed and dominated by the sense of its own littleness in the presence of the infinite creative Mind which called from the depths and gave form to this awful materiality, ano k • . "'"ss. ihe euno 1 , -uo Hawsers ot sham aboriginal "finrta " fi,„ i ™ ■'Sri;'* "■ •""' '-■"". ■■■I -w^ the earth thpZ ^ i " ®-°''' °''*"''«' wonders of .. i'i- .t™ r sr tsr r:r Lr^rvt'rsF'*"^"-™^^^^^ regrets and protests? Kismet t is f^t ''^^'' •""■ render to the inevitable ''and to Ll/!^ ""' """'' "'"■- is vain." ' *°" '° '™«''t tlie consequence i~ iTp^ir^ "h^ror ^"''' ^-^^-^^'^ "^ Gran Barranca of ttiv '™<"'^"™''''' "S^, the ^a..cence an/Lit '^r:rSr;^j::;^^ -en a panorama of such primitive lovelinesland of By PATH AND TKAIL. 27 such wild and imposing appearance. The absence of all soand was startling, and the sense of isolation oppres- sive. Tennyson's lines in his "Dream of Fair Women," visited me : "There was no motion in the dumb, dead air, Nor any song of bird or sound of rill. Gross darkness of the inner .sepulchre Was not so deadly still." In heaven or on earth there was not a sound to break the uncanny stillness, save alone the solitary call of some vagrant bird which but made the silence more severe. Three miles to westward were the cones of the Sierras throivn up and distorted by refraction into airy, fantas- tic shapes which, at times, altered their outlines like unto a series of dissolving views. Above them all, high in air; rose the Pico de Navajas, now veiled in a drifting cloud of fleecy whiteness, but soon to come out and stand clear cut against a sapphire sky. Here and there the moun- tains were cleft apart by some Titanic force, leaving deep, narrow gorges and wild ravines, where sunlight never enters and near which the eye is lost in the twilight of a soft purple haze. With a field glass I swept the ter- rifying solitude, and the landscape, expanded by the lens, now grew colossal. Around me, and afar off, in this des- olation of silence and loneliness, stood in isolated majes- ty, weird architectural figures, as if phantoms of the imagination had materialized into stone. Huge irregu- lar shafts and bowlders of granite and gneissoid, left standing after the winds and rains had dissolved the softer sand and limestones, assumed familiar, but in m 28 BY PATH AND TBAIL. cafllf!?" ^' '""^ '^* ^""^y ^'''«'' Woomed with trom frozen into fririditv a, if rf^ "Miocene times were billows stifferan^C a .tt "' O e' l-'V^* ''« plain or black, igneous matter in a sk ' f' r""'' .., J- , Sreat mountains were hfava,} „„ w^ading the region of the clouds AndtL . !. ^' the clouds must "win out " f !• , f ' "'""''"" ir^^hrr--'"--=^f with restless ener J ».'°^' . '^"P^^'-''«-ing clouds, «ides,Uri;i:'; indSltd;:^ atdTh-'^''^. '" T' into towering masses nf iJi """"'■' """^ fashioning them derful fonnatiZ '*''' ''"' architecturally won- The torrential rains and melting snows have rushed BV PATH AND TB.\IL. 29 down the rugged slopes and opened ghastly wounds in the sides of the mountains. These wounds are the deep gulches, the dark ravines and abysses of horrent and gloomy depths where sunlight never enters. The run- lets, streams and hurrying waters were rushing to a com- mon meeting and as they fled they left scars on the face of their enemy and the clouds were avenged. And when these fluid auxiliaries met together each one of them car- ried to the common center large contributions of silt and sand, spoils torn from the fee. The mountains rolled huge rocks upon their enemies, poured liquid, fiery tor- rents of molten masses which hardening into metallic shrouds covered the land and obliterated the courses and beds of the streams. But raw auxiliaries and recruits came from the region of the clouds, opened new chan- nels, massed their strength, and together cut mto and through the great mountains a frightful gash one mile deep and many miles long. Through this gash flows the Urique river as blood flows from a gaping wound, and as I looked down and into the dark abyss, I thought I saw Kubla Khan gazing into the gloomy depths of Anadu — Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns, measureless to man, Down to the silent sea. Before, above and around me was a panorama of un- surpassed sublimity, a tremendous manifestation of the creative will of God, a co-mingling of natural wonders and elemental forces proclaiming to man the omnipo- tence of God and the glory of the Lord. To the material mind the land around me is "desert land, a place of hor- ror and of waste wilderness, which cannot be sowed, nor 'it |i !l 30 BV PATH AND TRAIL. From the granite spur, on which I stonrt Ti . j and into the Gran Barran<.r I, . ' ""'^'^ "P"" Uri,ne, int> and over a7gr n'd a view 'o "'"°" "' ^"^ sculptured rocks and devastation of7 f^""""*^"' e.'er the eve of ^.r. ° j"""''"" "^ Are and water as GodtlSp^/tLTeaUfr ^' '^ '^^ ''"'^ °° -'^"^ departing sun floods the Li omnipotence, where the 111 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 31 To describe the stupendous mountain landscape of the Gran Barranca itself transcends the possibilities of lan- guage. The grandeur of the panorama and the massive ness overwhelm you, and though the mind expands with the genius of the place, yet piecemeal you must break to separate contemplation the might a^d majesty of the great whole. Only by so doing may the soul absorb the elemental glory of the matchless scene. ""«« «^t of yonder hill ;« twelve L/, ^ T"^"" *° '^« ^•™- "onument in America To 1™ nil '''''" "' ""« '"""^t io acquire a sense of intimacy BY I'Alil AKU TKAIL. 35 With this Banuiu'u, a luentul kiukp of ,li,tail mid u per- ception of its iimiifiiHity, jou iiiu.st dcs,.,.,,,] the sides of the granite rode whicli walls the awful depths. To the man who possesses the gift of appreciation of the ter- rific 111 nature, the prospect is a scene of surpassing splendor. The panorama is never the same, although you think you have e.xamined evcrv peak and escarp- ment. Ah the angle of sunlight changes there begins a shostly procession of colossal forms from the further side, and the trees around you are silhouetted against the rocks, and the rocks themselves grow in bulk and stature. Down toward the lowlands I saw thing.s, as if alive raise themselves on the foothills. These are the giant Suaharos, the Candelabrum cacti and beside them was the yucca, a bread tree of the south, whose cream white flowers shone across the stiakelike shadows of the strange cacti. The sepulchral ([uiet of the place, the con- scientiousness of the unnumbered ages past since time had hoared those hills and the absence of life and mo- tion fillec' me with sensations of awe and reverence. When darkness shrouds this region and storms of thunder and lightning sweep across it, penetrating the cavernous depths of the great gorge, and revealing the desolation and frightful solitude of the land, it would be a fit abode for the demons of Dante or the Djins of the southern mountains of whom the woods in ' other days told terrible tales. No man, after his sensations of awe have vanished and his sense of the sublime in nature is satisfied, may continue to gaze upon the scene around him, and yet admit that his mind has done jus- tice to the magnificence and glory of this panorama of one of the supremest of earth's wonders. To absorb iU i >: 36 BY PATH AKO TMASh. splendor the mmd mu,t become familiar with the genia. of the place, recognize the influence of the wind? and .torm« on the softer material, perceive the varUUon. o5 orH, form« and trees, till, expanding with the S of the mountains, the soul itself has grown colossal or Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that we contemplate. it^nl'ilf""' ^^J'o «uide I camped that night on the gran- te platform high up on the Gran Barranca. We saw the sun descend behind the great hills, the fleecy dour suspended and stationary, take on the Colors of fhe solar spectrum, the star, coming out, and then-at one s r de came the night. Early next morning we began the de scent to the Valley of the Churches. \he pafh wis na row and steep, around rocks honeycombed with water or eaten mto by zoophytes. It twisted here and th re through precipitous deflles, where the jagged spurs and onr^„* J 1 * P""""""""- ^'^ <=°"ti°ued to descend, arrovn« f ^^ """""^ '°'^'- Pr<'i«<-tions, across aftlin *^ t^'Jo'-Ker I'ne of the abysses, till early in the afternoon when we entered the mesa or table land whore n a huge basin reposes "La Arroyo de la, IgleLias"- forms, endlessly varied in design, and at times painted n every color known to the palette, in pure traufparent tones of marvelous delicacy_a shifting diorama of c„,- rh];frmTer:rr"""^"'™=-^-^^-^« The foliage had assumed the brilliant colors of sum- m n FATB AXD TIAIL. 91 mer, and from the mesa, midway betweeu IW mountains and the valley of the L'rique, the season was marking, on a brilliant chromatic scale, the successive zones dl vege- tation as they rose in regular gradations from the tropic floor. The atmosphere had the crystHliiiie triinsparency which belongs to mountain air, and through it the scen- ery assumed a vividness of color and grandeur of out- line which imparted to the mind ii sousi- (if exultntitm. "Till the dilating soul, enwrapt, trnnsfuscd Into the mighty vision passing there As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven. ' ' The appearance instantaneously diselo.seil wus that of an abandoned city, a wilderness of ruine-« "^ The dehghtful httle gardens and patches of vegeta- 42 BY PATH AKD TRAIL. ble land stolen from the mountain present a dozen con- trasts of color in the evergreen foliage of the tropical trees and vegetable plants. The red river of the Urique, after emerging from the great canyon, flows gently and placidly through the peaceful village. The river is not truly a deep, clay red — not the red of shale and earth mixed — bnt the red of peroxide of iron and copper, the sang-du-boeuf of Oriental ceramics. Rushing over ir- regular beds of gravel and boulders and by rock-ribbed walls, it cuts and carries with it through hundreds of miles red sands of shale, granite and porphyry, red rust- ings of iron and grits of garnet and carnelian agate. The evening c i the next day after entering the quaint and picturesque lown, I stood on a ledge overlooking the narrow vailey and again saw the long, snake-like shadows of the Suaharos creeping slowly up the side of the opposite mountain. The air was preternaturally still and was filled with the reflected glory of the departing sun. The sky to the east was like a lake of blood, and under it the ancient mountains were colored in deep pur- ple and violet. The sun was an enormous ball of fire floating in the descending heavens and above it were banks of clouds through which flashes of bloody light came and at times hung to their fringes. Just before the sun plunged behind its own horizon its light pene- trated the motionless clouds in spires, and when the sun dipped and was lost, the spires of glory quivered in the heavens and waves of red and amber light rolled over the atmospheric sea. Sharply outlined to my right was the mountain rising above the Urique like a crouching lion and holding in its outstretched and open paw the unknown and attractive little village. It is only nine of the night, but all lights are out and BY PATH AND TBAIL. 43 the village sleeps. My window is open, I can hoar the flow of the Urique, and as I listen to ts gurgling waters a cock crows across the river. The crow of the cock changes my thoughts which carry me back three years, and bear me to a room of the "seaside cottage" in the negro town of Plymouth, Montserrat,West India Islands Unable to sleep I am seated at my open window looking out upon the tragic waters of the Caribbean sea The moon swings three-quarters full in a cloudless sh.; the air I breathe briut-: to me a suspicion of sulphur es- capmg from the open vents of La Soufrlere, the vol- came mount rising to the west and dangerously near the negro village. I can hear the wash of the waves combing the beach and see the "Jumbo lights" in the windows of the negro cabins to remind the ghosts of the dead and the demons of the night that friends .ire sleeping there. It IS 2 o'clock in the morning, a sepulchral quiet possesses the uncanny place, when— the cock crows. Then from out a large hut, down the shore street, there conies a negro well on in years, followed by a young negress, iwo women and three men. They do not speak, nor shake hands, they exchange no civilities, they separate and dis- appear. Who were they? Snake worshipers. Great Britam owns the island and British law prohibits, under penalty, the adoration of the serpent. Stronger than the law of Great Britain is the law of African supersti- tion and the fear of the demon that dwells in the white snake, so reverently guarded and fed by the familv who live in the hut. Again the cock crows. Where am It Oh, in Uriqne. There is no noticeable difference in the crow of the cock the world over. This friendly bird from over the Urique river warns me it is getting late. I must to bed, so, "Good night to Marmion." CHAPTER VI. THE BUNNERS OP THE SIEEBA. If there be any state in the Kepublie of Mexico about which It 18 difficult to obtain accurate or exact statistics, It IS Sonora. Populated largely by Indians and miners, scattered over the whole state and immune to the salu- tary influence of law, it is difficult to take its census or bring Its population under the restraining checks of civ- ilization. Hermosillo, with its 25,000 people, is numeri- cally and commercially the most important town in So- nora. It IS 110 miles north of Guaymas. The harbor of Guaymas is one of the best on the Pacific coast, it is tour miles long, with an inner and outer bay, and will admit ships of the heaviest tonnage, and could, I think float the commerce of America. The Yaqui river, of which I will have occasion to write at another time en- ters the Gulf of California, called the Gulf of Cortein by the Mexicans— eighteen miles below Guaymas. The So- nora flows through the Arizipa valley, which is known as the Garden of Sonora on account of its incomparable fer- tihty. Formerly it was dominated by the terrible Ya- quis and a few years ago the depopulated villages and ranches were melancholy reminders of the rutlUess ven- geance of these ferocious men. The Sonora river valley, with its wealth of rich allu- vial land. Its facilities for irrigation and adaptation to semi-' , .ical and temperate fruits and cereals, will eventually support a great population. That the valley and adjacent lands were in ancient days occupied by a numerous and barbaric— not savage— 46 BY PATH AHD TRAIL. race, there can be no donbt. Scattered over the face of the country are the remains of a people who have long ago disappeared. Many of the ruins are of great extent, covering whole table lands, and are crumbling away in groups or in single isolation. Unfortunately, no docu- ments are known to exist to reco 1 the traditions of the ancient people before the Spanish missionary fathers first began the civilization of the tribes 400 years ago. When the early Jesuit missionaries were called home, the archives and everything belonging to the missions were carried away or destroyed. It is, however, possible that a search through the libraries of the Jesuit and Francis- can monasteries in France and Spain may yet reward the historian with some valuable finds. From an examination of the sites and the ruins, scat- tered here and there in the Sonora valley, I am satisfied that the ancient dwellers were a sedentary and agricul- tural people; that they were of the same race as the .Mold and suffered the same fate as that picturesque trioe, and from the unsparing hand of the same merciless destroy- ers, the Apache- Yaqnis. Long before the time of Cortez the evil fame of the unconquerable Yaqnis had settled around the throne of the Montezumas. There is a tra- dition that after the Spanish chief had stormed the City of Mexico and made a prisoner of the Aztec ruler, Mon^ tezuma said to him: "You may take possession of all my empire and subdue all its tribes— but, the Yaqui, never." To-day the Sonora valley is wet with the blood of slaughtered settlers. Formerly these fierce men con- fined their depredations to the Sonora valley and the Yaqui river regions, but the members of the tribe are now scattered over northern and central Sonora, the fighters, however, live in the Bacatete mountains and BY PATH AND IBAIL. 47 part^ ofthe Sierras. One-half of them are partially civ- a gnernlla war m the mountainous regions. These moun- and tur^trtr' ?*''*"^'^ '"'«' "' <^-» »'^-«- and inured to the extremes of heat, cold, and hunger They have no fear of anything or anybody excent 1h- rrait' :r """^ -"^^^ anTcaiL^r ;': them and the "shamans," or medicine men, who act Their wild isolated and independent life has given to the Yaquis all those characteristic traits of perff^Iself" rehance of boldness and impatience of restrl^fwh h tt^e'^trth'" 'r.*'^ ^^°^ ""'' "*''- -1-i y tribes of northern Mexico. Born in the mountains thov are familiar with the woods and trails. No coyote if the rocks knows his prowling grounds better than a YaS he secrets of the Sierra wilderness. Like the eagleT sweeps down upon his prey from his aerie aS the clouds, and, like the eagle, disappears wiS'^hu"',"'' ^fy "'"'•"^^ "" ^tl-^^ ot steel, and wear down a mountain deer. With the possible exceo- bon of his neighbor and kinsman, the Tarahumari of th^ Chihuahua woods, he is, perhaps, the greatest long dt tance runner in America r,nZTt^f^' I'T^^"" ''°''**'*' ^^'^ Pla<=« between the noted atUetes of the two tribes. Six years ago a Tara human champion challenged one of the greftest Int distance runners of the Yaquis. In a former contest the JuaTtoTof"" ""' ^V'''''' ^'^ ^P-'^l" -'- equal to 90 of ours, over hilly and broken ground in eleven hours and twenty minutes. Comparinf tills pel^ fi 48 BT PATH ASD TBAIL. formonce with those of civilized man in ancient and mod- ern times, the Yaqni, all things considered, wins the lau- rel crown. Pliny records that Anystrs, of Sparta, and I hilonedes, the herald of Alexander the Great, divid- ing the distance between them, covered ICO miles in twenty-four hours. Herodotus tells us that Phieddip- pides, the pan-Hellenic champion, traversed 135 miles over very rocky territory, and in gruelling weather, in less than two days, carried to Sparta the news of the advancing Persians. He almost attained an apotheosis m reward for his endurance, showing that, even among the athletic Greeks the feat was deemed an extraordi- nary performance. History also credits Areus with win- ning the Dolichos, of two and a half miles, in a fraction less than twelve minutes, at the Olympic games, and straightway starting on a homeward run of sixty miles, to be the first to bear the joyous news to his native vil- lage. In recent times, Howell, of England, in 1882, trav- eled 150 miles in twenty-two hours and thirty minutes, and Fitzgerald, in Madison Square Garden, went, in 1886, on a quarter-mile circular track, ninety miles in hfelve hours. Longboat, the Oneida Indian from the Brentford reservation, Canada, won the Boston Mara- thon, twenty-six miles, in two hours and twenty-four minutes. These modem feats, however, were per- formed over carefully prepared courses and ought not to take rank with the rough mou- 'lin and desert races of the Yaqnis and Tarahumaris. The race of six years ago was run over the same course as the former, and was the same distance, that is, ninety miles. Piles of blankets, bridles and saddles, bunches of cows, sheep, goats and burros were bet on thb result, and, when the race was over, the Yaqui bravea ill •I — Coprrlght by Uadrrwood * Underwood, Ntw York. TARAHDHARI INDIANS, NOBTUBBN UBXICO By PATH AND T»A1L. 49 were bankrupt The night before tho «vent the Indian, camped near the starting line, and wiitn the »un went down opened the betting. An liour before the .tart tho cour.e wa« lined on each side with men two miles apart. Precisely at 4 in tho morning tho racers, wearing bull- hide KHndals and breech-clouts, or, to be more accurate, the string, toed the mark and were sent awav, e.four- aged by tlie most extraordinary series of hi-yi-iiis yells -hrieks and guttural shouts ever heard by civiii.ed man' Ihe path carried them over rough ground, ulong the verge of deep precipices, over arroyos or old river beds across and sands. Every two miles the run,.or.s stopped for a quick rub down and mouth wash of pi„ola or atole a com meal gruel. Then with u " win for the Ya.,ui« • ' or the Human women already welcome vou," whispered in his ear, the runner bounds into the wilderness. Three clock that afternoon the men were sighted fr.nu the flnish line running .shin to shin, and at .•):!,■> the Tarahu- man crossed the mark amid a chorus of triumphal veins retrieving the honors lost in the former contest and" mak- ing l"s "ackers "heap rich." The ninety miles were run by both men in eleven hours and fifteen minutes, and cons.denng the nature of the ground, it is doubtful if any of our great athletes could cover the distance in the same time. In addition to his fleetness of foot and staying powers the laqui IS a man of infinite resources. Years of thirst starvation and exposure have produced a human tvpJ with the qualities and developed instinct of the coyote of the desert. He is the descendant of manv gener- ations of warr.ors, and is heir to all the ac,,uired infor- mation of centuries of experience, of bush, desert, and mountain fighting. There is not a trick of strategy, not 50 BY PATH ABD IBAIL. a bit of savage tactics in war, not a particle of knowledge bearing upon attack, engagement and escape, with which he is not famiUar, for he has been taught them all from infancy, and has practiced them from boyhood. He is the last of the Indian fighters, and, perhaps, the greatest. The world will never again see a man like him, for the conditions will never again make for his reproduction. With him will disappear the perfection of savage cun- nmg in war and on the hunt, and when he departs, an unlamented man, but withal a picturesque character, will disappear from the drama of human life, will go down into darkness, but not into oblivion. What, then, is the cause of the murderous and pro- longed hostility of the Yaquis to Mexican rule I Why is the exterminating feud aUowed to perpetuate itself, and why are not these Indians subdued? Must Sonora be forever teirorized by a handful of half-savage mountain- eers, and must the march of civilization in Sonora be ar- rested by a tribe of Indians? To get an answer to these questions I asked, and ob- tamed an interview with General Lorenzo E. Torres commander in-chief of the First Militarv Zone of Mex- ico. With my request I inclosed my credentials accredit- ing me as a person of some importance in his own coun- try and a writer of some distinction. Although the general's time was filled with important military affairs and another engagement awaited him, he received me with that courtesy and politeness which seem to be an inheritance of the educated members of the Latm race the world over. Though a man of fuU 60 years, the general appears to retain all the animation and vitality of the days when, by his impetuosity and dauntless courage, he won his brevet at Oajaoa, and the BY PATH AND IBAIL. 51 tassels of a colonel on the field of Mien. To the physical buoyancy and elasticity of younger days were now wed- ded the conscious dignity of high reward and the no- Mity of facial expression which waits on honorable age After an exchange of introductory courtesies, I made Known at once the purport of my visit "General would ycu kindly give me some informa- tion about the Yaquist In my country we have heard the evidence of one side only, and that was not always favorable to the Mexican government. We would be pleased to kno the truth, . , as to be able to form a just and impartial judgment." The general very oblig- ingly proceeded to satisfy my request ^_ "The fend with the Yaquis," he smilingly replied, goes back many years. The trouble began in the days of the conquest of Mexico. In 1539, when the Spaniards first crossed the Mayo river, and penetrated the lands of the Yaquis, they found them entrenched on the banks of the Yaqm river, awaiting the advance of the Euro- peans and ready for battle. Their chief, robed in the skin of a spotted tiger, profusely decorated with colored shells ana the feathers of the trogon, stepped to the front of lus warriors, drew a line upon the ground and defied the Spaniards to cross it. The Spanish captain protest- ed that he and his men came as friends ; they were simply exploring the comitry, and all they asked for or wanted was lood for themselves and horses. " 'We will first bind your men and then we will feed y^nr horses,' was the answer of the Yaqui chieftain. While he was yet speaking he unwound a cougar lariat, and advanced as if he intended to rope the Castilian of- t7\, ^1 ""'^^'' ''«"'" ^°' » 1"-" engagement, which ended in the retreat of the Spaniards. Later, in 1584 'i m 52 BY PATH AND TBAIL. Don Hartinez de Hurdiade tried to conquer them, and was defeated in three separate campaigns. However, strange to relate, in 1610, the Yaquis, of their own ac- cord, submitted to the Crown of Spain." "Are they braver and better fighters, general, than the other tribes now at peace with the republic 1" "I think they are," replied Don Lorenzo. "Mountaineers are everywhere stubborn fighters. At any rate, for the past fifty years they have given us more trouble than all the Indians in Mexico and Yucatan. Don Diego Mar- tinez, in his report, made mention of the indomitable bravery and cunning strategy of the Yaquis of his time. In his 'Eelacion,' or report of his expedition, he said that no Indian tribe had caused him so much trouble bb the Yaqui. After their submission, in 1610, they stayed quiet until 1740, when they again broke out. The rebel- lion was quenched in blood, and for eighty-five years they remained peaceful. Then began a period of inter- mittent raids. The years 1825, 1826 and 1832 were years of blood, but the Yaquis were, at last, subdued and their war chiefs, Banderas and Guiteieres, executed. In 1867 they again revolted, and were again defeated, but de- spite all their defeats, they were not yet conquered. "They led a serai-savage life in the Yaqui valley, but were always giving us trouble, raiding here and there. The majority of thera would seemingly be at peace, but human life was always more or less in danger in and near the Yaqui district. "Isolated bands of them lived by plunder, raiding, foraging and murdering on the rancherias and hacien- das. This condition of things was, to say tli? lenst, ex- tremely irritating. No self respecting government can tolerate within its borders gangs of ruffian.s defying civ- BY PATH AND TBAIL. 53 The federal government de- ilizatioD, law and order, cided to act." "Were you then the general in command, Don Lo- renzo I" "No, I was governor of Sonora; it was later, in 1892, that I was given command of this zone. When war again broke out between the tribe and the federal troops, the Yaquis wer" very daring, and numerically strong; some hot engagements took place, and the Yaquis fled to the Bacatete mountains. From these hills they swooped down upon the mines, held up the trails and mail routes, and terrorized the surrounding country. Our troops pursued them into the mountains, storming their im- pregnable strongholds. It took ten years of tedious and bloody fighting to reduce them and bring them to term.s. We struck a peace, and to that treaty of peace the Mexi- can government was true, and stood by its terms and pledges. We gave the Yaqnis twenty times more land than they ever dreamed of cultivating. We gave them cattle, tools and money. We fed them and furnished them seed. We have been humane to a degree unde- served by the Yaquis." The general rose from his seat, and, for a few mo- ments, paced the room as if in deep thought. Whether he suspected my sympathies were with the Indians or that his government was wedged in between the base in- gratitude of the Yaqnis and the censure of the outside world, T do not know, but he interrupted hi.s walk, faced me with a noticeable shade of irritation on his fine face and continued : ' "I did even more; as religion has a soothing and paci- fjnng effect upon the soul and the passions, I obtained priests and Sisters of Charity for them; I established 1i 1 I? m 54 BY PATH AND IBAH/. schools among them. But you can't tame the wolf. Not- withstanding all our kindness and friendly efforts on their behalf, the tribe revolted again two years later. With the money we gave them, and the mission funds, which they took from the priests, they purchased rifles and ammunition from American adventurers and Mexi- can renegades, and made for the mountains. In their flight for the hills they carried with them one of the mission priests and four of the Sisters of Charity, hold- ing them captives for si.\ months. This happened on July 31, 1897." "Pardon me, general," I interposed, "but the most of us who are interested in the Mexican tribes, believe the Yaquis to be Christian." "They have a varnish of Christianity, it is true, but this relig'ous wash only helps to conceal a deep sub- stratum of paganism; at heart they are heathens and hold to their old superstitions and pagan practices." "So that, smce 1897— that is to say, for ten years— the Mexican government has been at war with tlie Yaquis!" "That is not the right word. The Yaquis do not fight in the open, so that no real battles are fought. &i detached commands we have to follow them into the mountains, and, as they know every rock and tree of the Bacatetes, we are pursuing ghosts." "How many Yaquis are there, Don Lorenzo?" "There are now some 4,000 left in Sonora. The ma- jority of these are peaceful, but sympathize with the outlaws and assist them in many ways. They aU speak Spanish, dr^s like poor Mexicans, and as the neutral Yaquis aid and give shelter to the fighters, we must re- gard them all as enemies of the republic." BY PATH AND TBAIL. 55 "So, then, there is no solution to the Yaqni prob- lemt" "Oh, yes, there is. We are sending them to Yucatan, Tabasco and Chiapas, with their families. There they work in the henequin or hemp fields and make a good Uving. Already we have transported 2,000, and unless the other 4,000 now here behave themselves, we will ship them to Yucatan also. The state of Sonora is as large as England, and cannot be covered by military troops and patrols without great expense. The Yaqni problem as you are pleased to call it, will be solved m due time, and Sonora, when fully developed, will amaze the world with its riches and resources." This expression of hope and faith brought my visit to a close. I shook hands with the general and took my leave of a distinguished soldier and a most courteous gentleman. !f^ CHAPTER VII. THE PBIE8T AND THE YAQUIB. The war between the Mexican government and the YaquiB is not conducted according to methods or prac- tices which govern civilized nations. It partakes more of the nature of a Corsican vendetta or a Kentucky feud. It is a war of "shoot on sight" by the Mexicans, and of treachery, cunning, ambushment and midnight slaughter by the Yaqiiis. It is a war of extermination. In 1861 Governor Pesquira, of Sonora, in a proclama- tion offering $100 for every Yaqui scalp brought in, calls them "human wolves," "incarnate demons," who de- serve to be "skinned alive." "There is only one way," writes Signor Camillo Diaz, "to wage war against the Yaquis. We must enter upon a steady, persistent campaign, following them to their haunts, hunting them to the fastness of their mount- ains. They must be surrounded, starved, surprised or inveigled by white flags, or by any methods human or dia- bolic, and then— then put them to death. A man might as well have sympathy for a rattlesnake or a tiger." And now let me end this rather long dissertation on this singular tribe by a citation from Velasco, the his- torian of Sonora. I ought, however, to add that the Yaquihasyet tobeheard in his defense. "Without doubt," writes Velasco, "it must be admitted that under no good treatment does the Yaqui abandon his barbarism, his perfidy, his atrocity. Notwithstanding his many treaties of peace with Mexico and the memory of what he suf- fered in past campaigns, yet on the first opportunity and III 1 lit 58 BY PATH AND TRAIL. on the slightest provocation he breaks faith and becomes worse than before." When I returned to Qunyinas from Torin I learned that a desperate engagement between the Mexican troops and the Yaqui Indians, in the mountains southeast of this city, had taken place. I have already mentioned a raid made by the Yaquis on the railroad station of Len- cho, Sonora, in which the station master was killed, four men seriously wounded and three girls swept to the mountains. Since then the Mexicans have been on the trail of the Yaquis ; now and then exchanging shots, with an occasional skirmish, but not until the day before yes- terday did the enemy and the Mexican troops come to close quarters. One cannot place much confidence in the wild reports now circulated on the streets of Guaymas. A Mayo runner, who came in with dispatches this morn- ing, is reported to have said that the Mexicans lost twenty men in the battle, and that many of the wounded were lying on the field, still uncared for, when he left. He says the Yaquis were defeoted, but as they carried away their dead and wounded when they retreated, it was not known how many Yaquis were killed. Owing to the inaccessible nature of the country and its remoten«"'S from here, we do not expect further particulars anvil to-morrow. If tne Yaquis had time to carry off their dead and wounded, depend upon it, the Mexican troops gained no victory. I had a talk this afternoon with a governmental ofBcial, who had no mi'r-: information than myself, about the engagement. He declared in the course of our conversation that it was the purpose of the na- tional government and of the state of Sonora to exter- minate the Yaquis, and that the troops would remain in the mountains till the last of the Yaquis was bayoneted BV PATH AKU lUAlL. 59 or shot When I ventured the remark that the authori- ties o( Mexico said the same thing forty years ago, have been repeating it at measured intervals ever since, and that the Yaquis seem to be as far from annihilation as they were in Spanish times, he became restless, rose from his seat and his color heightened. I thought he was go- ing to vomit. I steadied him by ordering up the cigars and a bottle of tequila. He then informed me in a eonfi- den lal whisper that "the Yaquis were, indeed, terrible fighters but now it would soon be all up with them Wignor Pedro Alvarado, the owner of the greatest silver mine m Mexico and the wealthiest man in'tlie republic had offered to raise and keep in the field at his own ex- pense, a regiment of Mexican 'Eurales' for the cxter- mm.ation of the Yaquis." On my way from Torin to Guaymas I called to pay my respects to the priest in charge of one of the inland villages where I was compelled to pass a night. After a very courteous reception and some p-eliminary tatlc I expressed a wish to have his views , .he misunder- standing between the Mexican government and the Yaqui indians. I adverted to my interview with General L E .!"w '„"°'^ """"^"^ *^ substance of our conversation V\ ell," he began, "if an impartial tribunal, like The Xiague convention, could examine the dead and living witnesses of both sides, and after sifting and weighing the result of the evidence, the scales of justice might pos sibly turn in favor of the Indians. It matters little now with whom the fault rests. The Yaquis cannot get a bearing, and if they could what would it avaU themj It s a case of the 'race to the swift, the battle to the strong, and the weak to the wall.' When the American troops were carrying extermination to the Apaches in 60 BY PATH ANU TBAIL. Arizona, the Indians were reprcHented in ttte i^astern states and Middle West as demons escaped from hell and incarnated in Apache bodies. It was madness to offer an apology for the Indians or to hint at the provo- cation and treatment goading them to desperation. The public voice had spoken, the case was closed — Koma locuta est, causa&nita est." "I am a Mexican, and by force of birth and family ties, am with my own people, but as a priest of Ood, I ought not to tread upon the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax." "Are the Yaqnis Catholics, padre miof " I asked. ' ' i'ully one-half of the Yaquis are as devout Catholics as any people of Mexico. The mountaineers, whose an- cestors were converted to the faith, are outlaws for aoO years and retain, as a tradition, many Catholic ceremon- ies wedded to old pagan superstitions and practices. The fact, that when in 1898 they fled to the mountains and carried with them in their flight the parish priest and four nuns, and did them no barm, is a convincing proof that they still retain a reverence for the priesthood and for holy women." "Then at one time the whole tribe was converted to the Catholic faith?" ' ' Yea, and if the greed and covetousness of politicians .lud adventurers had not foully wronged them, the mem- bers of the Yaqui tribe would to-day be among the best and most loyal citizens of the Mexican republic. "As early as 1539 Father Marcos of Nizza visited the Yaquis in the Sonora valley. Ten years after Nizza 's visit two Jesuit missionaries took up their abode among them. Other missionaries followed until, at the time of Otondo's expedition in 1683 to Lower California, nearly including the BY PATH AND THAIL. ■11 the triben of Sonora and C'liiliualuia. Yaquis, wen C'liri.ftianized. "They wure among the first to Ikj converted by the Jesuits. Originally extremely n-arlike, on being con- verted to Christianity, their «avage nature was com- pletcly subdued .-.nd they became the most docile and tractable of people. They are invariably honest, faith- ful and industriou.s. They are also the fishermen and famous pearl-divers of the Gulf of California . "^Ia\ "!! ^"''"''' '^""^ Christians they continued to hold to their tribal unity, while many of the other tribes were^ merged in the older Indian population, known as 'Indies Mansos.' They yet retain their tribal laws and clanship, and it is their loyalty to these laws that has led to much of the trouble between them and our government. ' ' •Does the Republic of Mexico recognize their status as an independent body or an imperium in imperioV I asked. "You have touched the crux of the whole .|uestion," he replied. "The Mexican government has made many treaties with the Yaquis, thus acknowledging in a meas- ure their separate political entity, if not independence. But, when a \aqui violates a Mexican law, the Republic demands his surrender that he may be tried and pun- ished by Its own courts, while on the other hand, if a Mexican commits an outrage on a Yaqui, our govern- ment Will not admit the right of the Ya<,uis to trv him and punish him." "But will your government punish himf " • 3'' '^^^"^^^ ''™' »■"! his crime be proved, ves; that IB If he be a nobody, but if he has money or i^uential (U DY PATH AND niAlL. friendtf, he's never caught, or if rnught, is rarely voa- victed. :'The Indian doeH not understand this way of doing tlilugH, and lie takes the Ir.w into his own hands, and then tlie trouble begins." "What was the opinion of the eirly missionary fathers touching the Yaiiuis?" "Among all the wild tribes ''vangelizcd and civilized by the Snanifih priests, among the Sinoloans, Chihnhu- ans, Tarnhumaria, Mayos and others, the Yaquis held first place, and were rated high for their morality and attachment to the faith. "The famous Father Salvaticrra, who spent ten years on the Yaqui mission; Fathers Eusebio Kino, Taravel iind others, have left on record their con Tiondations of the fidelity of the Yaquis and the cleanliness of their moriil lives." "It was a Yaqui chief who accompanied Father Ugarte when he mapped and explored Lower California. When tlip mission of Father Taravel of Santiago, Lower Cali- fornii'., was threatened by the savage Perucci, the Yaquis sent sixty of their warriors to the defense of the priest (end his converts. They offered 500 fighting men to pro- tect the missions of Bija, California, provided they were called upon nnd transportation across the gulf fur- nished them. In those days they were famed for their fidelity to the Spaniards, in fact all the early writers speak kindly of them, and they were then known as the 'most faithful Yaqui nation.' "When the missions were dissolved by the Mexican government, and the fathers compelled to abandon their posts, the Yaquis and the Mexicans quarreled. In 1825 they revolted, claiming they were burdened with heavy BY PATH AND T«AIL. 63 taxM. Banderas, the Yaqui chief, led the uprising and won nmterml eonc'essions from our government. ",„n. deras headed another rebellion in 1832, in which l„- wis defeated and slain. The next uprising was in 18SI r caused by encroachments on the lands of the fn„. ui.d the present war is due to the lawless acts l ili,- ,„lj hunters and their contempt for the laws of !!;.. Yu„ui "-■'^•...^''^y '■«''« 'he misfortune to live o- the fringe ofcivihzation, where provocation is alwa» „, -uaciiK ' U I am not trespassing too generously on v,.«r andon- 1 tne missions in Sonoraf" „r'"?!^.j"'' "'" °''°"'^'"' "■* '■^ssions," replied the pnes , they were exiled-I do not like to use the word expelled-from all Mexican territory after the declara- tion and separation of the republi.i from Spain You see party spirit, or rather, racial divergence, was very acute and rancorous in those times. When the Mexi- cans achieved their independence, all Spaniards, includ- ing priests, officials and professional men, were ordered to leave the country-. There were hardly enough native priests to admmister the cauonieally established par- ishes, and for twenty-five years the Indians of Sonora were without the consoling influence of the Christian re igjon or the pacifying presence of the only men who could restrain the expression of their warlike instincts " So you are of the opinion that if the missionaries had remained with them, the Yaquis would now be at peace with Mexico!" .f?h T^rV^ "■■ ^° ^^^' ^^*" '*■« J««"" superior of the Alta Pimeria' missions decided to send Father Eusebio Kino from Sonora to open the mission to the Digger Indians' of Lower California, the military gov- f 64 BT PATH AND TBAIL. emOT refused to iet Father Kino go, saying that the priest had more power in restraining the Indi^.n? o^ the Ronora and Yaqui lands than a regiment of soldiers." My interview with this scholarly and devout priest was abruptly brought to a close by the arrival of some visitors. With the kindness and affability which dis- tinguish all the Mexican ecclesiastics that I have been privileged to meet, he insisted upon accompanying me to the garden gate, where with uncovered head I shook his -friendly baud, and after thanking him for his gra- cious hospitality, bade him good-bye. On the way to my posada, or lodging house, I thought of the honors heaped upon the Romans by Macauley, and the admiration of the world for men like Horatius, who in defense of their country, rush to death, asking: "How can men die nobler, Than facing fearful odds. For the ashes of their fathers And the temples of their Godst" BOOK II. IN THE LAND OF THE "DIGGER INDIAN" CHAPTEB Vin. WHEBE MAN ENTERS AT HIS PEBIL. Beaching out one thousand miles into the Pacific ocean elongating itself like a monstrous thing alive m futUe attempt to separate itself from its parent con- tinent, there is a lonely land as unknown to the world as he vast barbanc interior of Central Africa or the re- pel ant coasts of Patagonia. Upon its .inhospitable shores on the west, the sea in anger resenting its intrusive pres- ence has been waring for untold ages, hurling mountain- ous waves of immeasurable strength on its sandy beach Z"SuUof7T ^''^.''«-"-- ^t t-es the'waters of the Gulf of Cortez, rising in their wrath, rush with fierce violence on its western flank, and th; sound of the impact IS the roaring of the sea heard far inland In ItrlV. ,"". ''""'°'^ ^''''' "»'-''« •"--« been opened TudL H "" ^''^^"'°«™^'le, and indentations, inlets and deep bays remain to record the desperate na ure of he unendmg battles of the primordial forces. This aw! ful and vast sohtude of riven mountains and parched deserts retains the name it received 350 years ago when bap^ed m the blood of thirteen Spaniards sl^ugktered B«i „ P r*r "^ ""'' ^"^ '"'^"S" wilderness. This Is Baija Cal.-Lower Califomia-a wild and dreary re SalTfi'-' *°;T*'' '""'"""'^ -'^ ravines, a^d Tn Peaces disfigured by ghastly wounds inflicted bvvol oanic fire or earthquake • it '^HerT'"" ^"'f '""'"''^' """^'-^ '" '•«'°P-o with It. Here arc mountains devoid of vegetation extraor dinary plateaus, bewildering lines of f ragmenta " cUff" 68 ny PATH AND TRAII,. a land where there are no flowing rivers, where no rain falls in places for years, volcanoes that geologically died but yesterday and whose configurations and weird out- lines are impossible of description. Its rugged shores are indented and toothed like a crosscut saw. It is a land of sorrow almost deserted of man and shrouded in an isolation startling in its pitiful silence. Save the nn- pmofitable cactus and the sombre sagebrush, friends of the desert reptiles, there is no vegetation in regions of startling sterility. If there be upon the earth a countrj- lying under the pall of the Isaiahan malediction, it is here; for here is the realization and accomplishment of the dread proph- ecy portending the blight of vegetable life. "1 will lay it waste, and it shall not be pruned or digged, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also com- mand the clouds that they rain no rain upon it." Here in the vast interior loneliness of this forbidding land are horrent deserts where the traveler may ride hundreds of miles and find no water or look upon other vegetation than thorny cacti or scattered bushes of the warning greese-wood, telling him that hero is death. The lonely mountains bordering these deserts are striking in their visible sterility. Torrential rains in seasons over- whelm the struggling vegetation that in the intervening months of repose invade the few inviting patches, and, rushing madly to the foothills, sweej) all vegetaMo life before them. Then, when the storm retires, and the blazing sun burns the very air, the porphyritic rocks l)eooine an ashen white, and, reflecting the sun's rays, throw nlT lolii::., billows of unendurable heat. Most of these re]>elleMt ranges are granite, hut in many places there an- feiii;.! BV PATH AND TRAIL. gg In some -sectiins^h "l^el" a e „. 7 1 ''"^ «""''« '^"^ fron, theso rock. Towtd ,^0 f. T'^ "'" ''«"»"« slates aro accomDanitHh, , "'^ "^ California the often appeaTrrnrinJeprd^nr'.''^ '"""'°"''^' -<» toward the high granite S'^Near The l> fi"'''"'"* the land is sown with vnl^=„- ** ^ '"''^« «oast of land termerml Is do teT "T' ''™''™ l^^' """''■'^^^ P-'. Immense .treamsVf "fva T;//^'' "'"" '•^""■- deserts and now cover «,„- fi '""" '"'*«'"«d the of the sandstone ZZ^^^i^t^rTiT''' ''""""^ ""-^ of the river of mineral and oth '"'''*' ^"^ '^''ies magma, zig-zag here id H °''«^''''' '"""«'■ <^'>"'"1 •^iing streams on„TsoHdified"H ''" '''°"""-^' '•--'- and igneous, rocks spHntered an^ w' TV'^'' "'"«»"^ of «rit stones, eongro^e^el :ha ^'t , ""' t"^'"'' basalt. ' °"'"SN halts and syenite pef^thtura:::ra?dt'""' ^■^'" ^^---^^ -^ ™p- lakes, white as snnw Z f '"'' '"^''^' and dry lie. ^e a du t The werrd"",',"":'^' """^''^ '^' -°^ the grin, desolation he wsH'' ^k^""' ^''«"-' accursed and forsaken of m,n '''r''^/"^'"'"' '^'^^''^'^ toad, the tarantula and1h;TnattrHfVtV'" 'r^l raise a barrier to exploration Tho , . *""' ""^ to be found over an arernf ^ f ."""•' ''"'"''''8 '^"ter depressions and in holes here ^n^Tht "' t*^'^ '' "' '"•"' where the rain has eone:tedTn natura H^^ solar rays and partially protected frn ^'■°'" «nt there are seasons wK^^^ls^rraLTa^S 70 BY PATH AND IBAU^ then in this awesome peninsular furnace, the air is burn- ing, the sand hot as volcanic ash, and the silence like unto that which was when God said "Let there be light." The deserts of this mysterious land are regions of sand where earth and sky form a circle as distinct as that traced by a sweep of the compass. Into this desolation of sterility and solitude man enters iit his peril, for here the deadly homed rattlesnake, the white scorpion, thirst and sweatless heat invite him to his ruin and offer a constant menace to life. If with de- termined purpose he dares his fate and attempts the crossing of the parched and desolate land, the white glare reflected from the treacherous sand threatens him w itii blindness. At times he encounters the deadly sand- storms of this awful wilderness of aridity, the driving aiid whirling sands blister his face and carry oppression to bis breathing. If the water he carries fail liiiii, be may find a depression half full of mockery and disap- pointment, for its waters bold in solution alkali, alum or arsenic, and bear madness or death in their alluring ap- pcarunce. If night overtake him and sleep oppress him, he must be careful where he takes bis rest, lest a storm break upon bim and bury him under its ever-shifting sands, and if he sleeps well he may never awake. And these storms arc capricious, for, after welcoming the unhappy man to a hospitable grave in the desert and covering him with a nioimd many feet high and of liberal circumfer- ence, they are not satisfied to let him rest in peace, for, mouths later, it may be years, they scatter the dune and expose the mummified body. There are here no vultures to clean tlie bones, for the vulture is the hyena of the air and lives on putrefaction, and there is here no decompos- BY PATH AKD PBAIL. -" "e -,Jn« hi ^ ^■'' "^ ""''^ """^ ^''"' '^ith Wood; his fea tures are drawn and his face i.s neighbor to dea h And for h rf"r"'" '"' "" '"''"' ''"' ™t^ --■ hs botts for h^ ee are swollen shockingly, his l.„i.. is beginnS to bleach, Ins gait ,s shambling, and the strong nZof been bidding h.m good-bye, and is now leaving him it .8 gone forever, and only the primal instinct of 1 1 '^ ' craid'^irti'f f ■" ■" '"' ""^""'^ ■-'««- '-- human aid. In this lonely wilderness the cruel sun poors 72 BY PATH AND TBAIU down his intolerable rays till the very air vibrates with waves of heat. Nothing moves, nothing agitates the awe- some silence, there is no motion in the heavens, in the dmnb, dead air, on the burning san<). "'he madman tries to shout, but his throat can only reti'i ;• a hoarse guttural, and his blackened tongue hangs '.u; as he gasps for breath. Hunger is gnawing him, t,: rat is devouring him, and he does not know it. The cells of his brain are filled with fire, his body is burning; piece by piece he has torn away his clothes, and now, from throat to waist, he rips open his fiannel shirt and flings it from him. His sight has left him, his paralyzed limbs can no longer support his fleshless body, and blind, naked, demented, he falls upon the desert and is dead. Who was he? A pros- pector. Where was he going! To the mountains. For what? For gold. He follows is as did the wise men the star of Bethlehem. It lures the feet of men and often woos the rash and the brave to doatu and madness. When the prospector has achieved the conquest of the desert and reached the mountains, retaining his health and strength, he has accompliahed much, but there yet remain many trials and hardships to test the courage and endurance of the brave man. Not the least of these is the wear and tear on the mind of unbroken silence and absence of all life. There is nothing that shatters cour- age, chills the heart and paralyzes the nerves as surely as some inexplicable sound, either intermittent or persis- tent. The brain that ctnceived the "wandering voice" struck the keynote of terror, and when Milton described the armless hand of gloomy vengeance, pursuing its vic- tim through lonely places and striking when the terrified man thought himself within the security of darkness, he gave us one of the most awful examples of the fears of Bt PATH AKD TBAIL. 73 a guilty Boul overcome with helplessness and shook with nameless horror. There are those now living in this forbidding peninsu- la who have dared and conquered the burning heat and rackless sands of lonely wastes, only to encounter, when they- reached their goal of hope in the mountains spec- tres of the imagination m;d the wraiths of disordered wh?" ^ *'r! ""' '''"•"■'° «""««''■ " Phy'i-' wS who was pointed out to me shuffling across the plazuela in the town of San Rafael. He was a fine, manly fellow -n his day. earning a fair wage m the Rothschild smelter, when he took the mine fever and started for the mountains on a prospecting ex- pedition. He was all alone, carrying his pick and shovel, Zr. .'""^/°°'*- . A good deal of desultor>- wandering took him finally into a little canyon where he found a promising 'outcropping," and he went to work to locate n„Z' "7«' \^e«ol«t« place, but beautiful in a way. On either side of the valley that formed the bosom of tlie canyon, the mountain sloped up and up, until the purple ZIZ7 "'"i"' ""' '"'^' ^•'"'' - ""' ™'^ «nd gramte-strewu aeclmty no vegetation took root No game existed there; the very birds never flew across the place, and it was so sheltered from currents of air that even the winds had no voice. This dreadful and unnatural stillne.ss was the first thing that impressed Itself upon Oaliego^ Particularly at nig "t time, when "Ihe TZ * r "^'"^ """^ Bointillating as they always seem in Hoor 7^ tZ' •''?'*"^ '^' '^' ''^ ^""'-^ «it "t «'e open 1Za\^1 hut, and the silence would be so vast and pro- found that the beating of his own heart would drum in his ear like the strokes oi a trip-hammer. He was not a man of weird imagination, bnt unconsciously and grad- 74 BT PATH AMD TSAIL. nally an awe of the immense lolitTide posseMed him. And little by little, as he afterward told the storjr, another feeling stole in npon him. The rock-ribbed gorga began to assume a certain familiarity, at though he had seen the place in other days and only partially remem- bered it, and he conid not shake off a subtle impression that he was abont to hear or see something that would make this recollection vivid. There was no human being within a hundred miles, and often he was on the point of abandoning the claim and retracing his steps. But before he could make up his mind he struck an extraordinary formation. It was a sort of decomposed quartz, flaked and flecked with gold in grains as large as pin heads, and ragged threads that looked as if they had at one time been melted and run through the rock. Antonio knew enough to be satisfied that it would not take much of the "stuff" to make him rich, and he worked with feverish haste, xmcovering the ledge. On the second day after his discovery, he was at the bottom of his shallow shaft, when suddenly he paused and listened to what he thought was the sound of a church bell. He rested on his shovel, the bell was ring- ing and the sound was pleasant to his ears. It reminded him of home, of the Sunday mass, and the fond, familiar church, but above all, it brought back to him the faces of the old companions and acquaintanors he met in the church square Sunday after Sund'iy and the veiled and sinewy forms and faces of the senoritas crossing the plaza to hear mass. How long he had been dreamily listening to the church bell he did not know, but suddenly the thought came to him that there could be no church nearer than a hundred miles. Still he could hear the bell BV PATH A.NII TBAIL. 75 distinctly, faint and as if af.ir, jet iwrfwtiv cluiir. It sonnded, too, like his parish b«ll. Antonio sprang out of his shaft and stood listening. The sonnd confused him and he could not tell exactly from what direction it came. It seemed now north, now south, and now somewhere above him, but it continued to nng, reminding him it was time for mass. Then the bell ceased to ring; aht thought the lone man, "the priest is at the altar and mass has began." The excitement of the mine had passed away from him as fever from a sick man. A sort of inertia crept over him and he dropped his shovel and idled for the rest of the day, thinking about the bell. As vet he wax not afraid, but, that night, seated before his lonely cabin lift heard the slow, rhythmic sound of the bell once again- he felt an icy creeping in his scalp and turned sick with dread. He was afraid of the awful solitude and afr.iid to be alone with the mysterious sound. He knew it could be no bell, knew that it must be an hallucination, vet be- fore It stopped, he went nearly mad. The next time he heard it "was in the afternoon of the following day. He stared about him and the old sense of familiarity returned ten-fold. The granite gorge seemed teeming with some horrible secret or a spectre was soon to appear and speak to him. He feared to look around him lest the awful thing would draw near. And now the bell begins to toll for the dead, and Antonio bears a voice from the air saying, "She is dead, she is aead. Ah, Cara Mia, ' ' spoke the lone man, " my heart IS dead within me, but I must go to your funeral and see you laid to rest, and I '11 soon be with you. " Still the bell kept tolling. Before it ceased, Antonio was flying out of the canyon, haggard, muttering to himself, wildly ges- 1 ii MICtOCOfV tISOlUTION TBT CHAIT (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 ^ |£ 112.2 Jfia ■— 1.1 1 U£ 1^ 1.8 li^i^l^ ^ TIPPLED IfvHBE lr.c jS I6S3 Eqi _ nocheaicr. <*,» vork U 1'16) *B2 -OJOO - Phine (?16) ZM- SM9 -Fox 76 BY PATH AND TEAIL. ticulating, and tears flowing down his cheeks. He made his way to San Hafael, starting up at night to hurry on, and pushing over the almost impenetrable country at such a speed that when he reached his destination he was broken down, a wreck and halt' demented. At times the awful solitude, the immeasurable stillness and isolation from human homes close in upon the lonely prospector and wear down the texture of the brain. So stealthily does the enemy of sanity creep in upon the do- minion of the mind, that the doomed man is not con- scious, or only dreamly conscious, of its approach. In the beginning he notices that he is talking aloud to him- self, then, after a time, he talks as if some one is listen- ing to him, and presently his questions are answered by, presumedly, a living voice. Then, at his meals, going and coming from his cabin, when he is burrowing into the side of a prospect, he hears a lone voice or many voices in conversation or in angry altercation. It is no use try- ing to persuade himself that his imagination is imposing on his sense of hearing, the voices are too real and audi- ble for that. Presently, lonely apparitions float in the air, mist-like and misshapen at first; then, as they ap- proach nearer, they assume human forms, descend to the earth and begin to talk and gesticulate. Then sometimes the wraith of a dead companion appears to him, walks with him to his rude hut a mile away, talks over old times, sits with him at his meals and sleeps with him. Nor, when wind-tanned and sun-scorched, he re- turns to his friends, may he ever be talked out of his de- lusions. He has heard the voices, seen the spectres, com- panioned with the dead and there 's the end of it. Some- thing like this happened to Pedro Pomaro who died, a rich man, a few years ago, in the little burg of Santa BY PATE AND THAIL. 77 Eosilla at the foot of Monta Reccia. He was prospeet- ing in the Kugenia range with Alphonso Tliimm,who per- ished of niountain fever seven weeks after they made camp. Pedro bnried his friend and companion in a" ide of the mountam, said a "de profundis" for the repose of h,s soul, and returned to lus lonelv tent. Three days after the burial of his eompanion, he was examinTng some ore he had taken out of the shaft, when he sav. S, n o coming toward him. He dropped the sample aXgan enses Tl ij; ''°°^"<'"^''^«^- When he returned to his senses Tl.mm was gone and Pedro retraced his way back to h.s tent. The next afternoon, at about 4 o'clock when L, r.Ji: u^ ''* '^' '^^^' ^'P'""-^" '•gain appeared Mariner th™ 'J^ """'""^ ''''• "^ "'' '^'^ ^--"t Manner the weddmg guest. He beckoned to Pedro to to the north, over rocky, broken ridges, and at last "Comeb ^'^-h^t-'^ Pedro by the 'arm and s d Come here to-morrow and dig." Thimm vanished Td Pedro, marking the spot the ghostly finger pointed out dragged himself back to his tent. He awoke at noon the nex day, cooked and eat his simple meal, and, shoulder ing his miner's pick, returned to the place shoUi him bv "Kl Colrd^"'"""" 'I"'? '" '''""^'"-'^ - ibail. g^ ways, never dies of thirst. An Indian will enter a desert stretching away for two hundred miles, carrying with him neither food nor water, and yet it is a thing unheard of for an Indian to go mad on the sandy waste, or die of hunger or thirst. God in His kindness and providence has made provision for man and animal, even in the great deserts. There is no desoUtion of sand so utterly bare and barren that here and there upon its forbidden surface there may not be found patches of the grease- wood, the mesquite and the cactus. Now the cholla, and . tuna, and the most of the cacti, bear fruit in season, and from these fruits the Indians make a score of dainty dishes. Even when not bearing, their barks and roots, when properly prepared, will support life. Nor need any man die of thirst, for the pitahaya and snaharo cacti are reservoirs of water, cool, fresh and plentiful. But then one must know how to tap the stream. By plunging a .'.nife into the heart, the water begins to ooze out slowly and unsatisfactorily, but still enough comes to save a man's life. Of course, you know that the man familiar with the moods of the desert never travels without a can matches and a hatchet. When he is running short of water he makes for the nearest bunch of columnar cacti, as the pitahaya and suaharo are called by us. He selects his tree and cuts it down, having already made two fires eight or ten feet apart. Then he makes a large incision in the middle of the tree, cuts off the butt and the end, and places the log between the fires, ends to fires. The heat of the fires drives the water in the log to its center when it begins to flow from the cut already made into hi.s can. It is by this method the Indian and the expert desert traveler renew their supply of water." Communing with myself, on the way to my hotel, I 84 BY ■>ATR AHD TBAIL. thought, "So,after all is said aiid done, education is very much a matter of locality. lu large centers of popula- tion the theoloj' an, the philosopher, the scientist, is a groat man ; but thrown on his own resources, on the wide deserts, in the immense forests, he Is a nobody and dies. On the other hand, the man bred to desert ways or trained to forest life, is the educated man in the wilder- ness, for he has conquered its secrets. That training, tht'ii, apart from the supernatural, wliioU best prepare* a man to succeed in his sphere, which develops the facul- ties demanded by his occupation or calling, which makes hira an honest, rugged, manly man, is education in the best acceptance of the often ill-used term." CHAPTEU X. IHE noHT FOB UFE. Don Kstaban Ouiteras did me the kirJness lo acceDt au mv>t«t,on to dine with me this evening and pay ml ' partmR v,„t, for I leave Buena ^ista fo-n.orrol and may never ngain trend its hospitable streetr H« companied me, after dinner, to my hotel room anHf, opening a bottle of Zara MarascUno InTngi our ejgn.., I mduoed him to continue the conver aton alon« the l.nes traced out the evening I was his t^^est ' He spoke of beds of lakes on mountains 4,5oo feet above the Sep and o fossil and petrified skeletons of stranKe fish and animals found in the beds, of the singular ZI of the desert rat which, when about to die, dmbs the mesqu,te tree and prepares its own grave in the crotch L r: Z, Tm '" .'""^"«'''»'"J tunnel Mwee" tains trL Jrf ' •"'^""'"' "^ •">'« '" ""> fflo"- LTh M "^ ?"■•"'"'''"' "^ *'"''■■ movements on the march their racapity, the blight of all vegetable I fe after the mynad hosts had passed, and of fhe red and He refrrLTo r' t '"" "''' -*«™-«n/i- Me referred to the strange ways of the "side winder •' or desert rattle snake, of the wisdom of iLT^s'^^d other reptUes and of animals living and dying on the great ocean of sand, and of the skeletons of men who went mad an. died alone on the wilderness ordeslla! 86 BY PATH A»D TBAIU DOS KBTABAN 8 8T0RV. "Were you ever lost on the desert, Si^ior Guiterost" "No," he answered, "but when I wuh u young man and was not as well nccjuainted with the ways o' the Uisierto as I am now, I had a trying experience, and nearly lost my life. "It was on the 'Miierto,' and I wandered ninety miles over sands so hot that I could scarcely walk on them, though wearing thick-soled shoes. The Muerto desert is in circumference 230 miles, and is, in fact, the bed of an ancient sea, which evaporated or disappeared many thou- sands of years ago. During the months of July and Au- gust the Muerto is a furnace, where the silence is oppres- sive, the glare of the ash-hot sand blinds the eyes, and the burning air sucks water and life from the body of man or beast. I left the 'Digger' camp at the foot of the Corneja mountain early in the week, intending to in- spect a copper 'find' discovered by an Indian some fifty miles southwest of the Digger camp. The trail carried me through an ancient barranca, widening into a gorge which opened into a canyon, through which in season fiows what is called the Bio Kata. Here I made camp for the duy, cooked a meal and slept, for I had started as early as 3 o'clock in the morning. The heat within the canyon marked 90 degrees on a small pocket thermome- ter I carried to test the temperature of the nearest water to the reported 'find.' As the air about me carried only 10 or 12 degrees of humidity, this heat in no way incon- venienced me. At 4 o'clock that afternoon I awoke, con- tinued on through the canyon, and in two hours entered the desert. "You must understand that in this country no man in BY PATH AND TRAIL. 87 ^e Tv "V."*"""' '»'«"<'"'''« of a great de.ert during acme ash, would burn hun up, and he could not carry enough water to meet the evaporaUon from his ZyZ ^L^n T'V """^ «•"" P™*^*"' '» '"od i-dTed thai I began to whisper to my ..if that before 8 o'clock of T mornmg I wouW strike tue foothills of the Sierras Blln! cas and leave the desert behind me r^l'Sr^^'J ^^ '*'° P'"'^'"'« ^y^'f too much, or it my be that J • as not in the best of condition, but abou 3 m the morn,ug I sat down to rest. I was traveling S and brought with me only enough water a.nd f ood fo as me fourteen hours, knowing that when I reached the ToTLZ^' ""' '"r '""■« <"""P °^ Pedro Marri To a meditative man, the ^ ,sert at night has a ch. rm strX""" '/"'f "'" ^''« '■"»- and sLta^n™ s^ ence, the great sohtude, the limitless expansior of wh,te sand glistening mider a bright moon, and hnu,^: rnH 'TL°' ^°°'*"'" •'"'""""y "t™-" V affl tZ mind and bear in upon the soul a sensat of awe of reverence and a consciousness of the prese ^ If old. After a time, an meipressible sense of drowsiness possessed me. I had often traveled far on deserts hnt never before had I felt ,o utterly tired and sle ^y j re membered saying to myself, 'Just for a half hour 'and TosM ZllTir r ""'"« °^" '•'^ mountli'ns"" rose to my feet, blessed myself, and moved on knowinif I was going to have a hard fight of it * n-l"^* 1^t''^°^^ *•" '""'* ""' *•"" "f a smelting fur- nace. As I walked my feet sank in the yielding sand I was very thirsty, but I could not toueh^he walr in my canteen treasuring it as a raiser his gold. The blazing sun sucked away all perspiration, before it Ld time tf 88 BY PATH AND TRAIL. become sweat and collect upon the skin. To sweat wonld have helped me, but no man sweats in the desert. I now discarded all my clothing but my undershirt, drawers, hat and boots, even my stockings I flung upon the dry sand. "And now, for the first time, I took a drink from my canteen, not much, but enough to partially quench the fire of my parched tongue. I had my senses about me, I retained' my will, and I took the water, for I knew that my tongue was beginning to swell. At noon I struck a pot-hole, or sink, half filled with clear, sparkling water. I took some of it up in the lid of my canteen, touched my tongue to it and found it to be, what I suspected, impreg- nated with copperas and arsenic. My body was on fire, and thinking to obtain some relief, I soaked my shirt, drawers"and shoes in the beautiful cool water, and in my wet clothes struck for the mountains, looming some twenty miles ahead of me. I was a new man, and for an hour I felt neither thirst nor fatigue. "Then a strange numbness began to creep over my body. It was not pain, but a feeling akin to what I have been told incipient paralytics feel when the demon of paralysis has a .(f punish- ment, unchecked by public opinion, by law or oi-der, un- tamed by social amenities, unawed by the gospel of the BT PATH AMD T«A1L. 95 hereafter. The nearer we c-oiiif to the man who has no higher law than his own will, nor knows obedience to a higher authority timu himself, the nearer we come to a dangerous animal who eats raw meat, indecently expose, himself, loves dirt, hates peace, wallows in the flllh of unrestrained desire and kills the weaker man he does not Uce whenever the temptation comes and the opportunity AuJ^"'- t^ '"' '" "■« "'"" «''"' ^'"'. 'h« woman liK ^ ^°* '•• *^" "" '"'"'-and all nature exposes nothing the pity and melancholy wonder of man more supremely sad and heartrending that woman reduced to savagery. I n^ r?,* '"•''T *'"' '^taWished sixteen missions in ^n^."^ CaWornia begmning in 1683, sent to their pro- jcial m Mexi™ City from time to time, accurate reports of the conditjou of the tribes and the progress of relfgion and cm.7,tion among them. From the letters of these great pnests which, in places, bear upon the degeneracy and the al' T^*"" 1 *"' ^""^^ Calif omia ^Indians' and the appalling degradation to which it is possible, un- der adverse conditions, for human beings to descend I^^b^ M "" *J« ^°"»»«- «tant of tlese wre£ tribes. Many of these letters or "Belaciones," are yet in manuscript, and to the average student of missionary history, inaccessible. The historical value of these "Ee- IttT?* *r °^ """"^ ''**° '°°« understood by schol- ars but, to the general reader, even to the educated gen- eral reader, they were and are somewhat of a myth At a very early period their value was recognized by' that great traveler and historian Charlevoix, who in 1743 wrote : "There is no other source to which we cau resort to learn the progress of religior, the Indians, and I M 96 BY PA1H AMD TBAIU to know the tribes • • * of the Apostolic labors of the missionaries they give very edifying aceounts. ' Some day, it is to be hoped, the Mexican government, follow- ing the example of the Canadian parliament, which in 1838 printed the "Belat ons of the Jesuits" in Canada, will give to the world in editional form the letters of the Jesuits in Mexico and Lower California. However, from the books compiled from these letters, such as those of Fathers Venagas, Clavigero and Verre, we obtain a most pathetic and melancholy narrative of the woeful state of the tribes before the coming of the fathers. Apart from the divine courage and enthusiasm of the Spanish missionary fathers, nothing hos excited my ad- miration more than the learning and scholarship of the priests sent by the Catholic church for the evangelizing of savoge tribes and barbarous peoples. From on off- hand study of the brutish and deplorable ignorance of many of the tribes, it would be quite reasonable to as- sume that men of simple foith, good health and a knowl- edge of the catechism of the Council of Trent, would be best adapted for the redemption of a people "seated in darkness ond in the shadow of death." But Borne, with her occumuloted wisdom of centuries and unparalleled experience of human nature under adverse conditions, trains her neophytef, destined for foreign missions to the highest possible efficiency. We are not, then, when acquainted with her methods of education, surprised to find among her priests, living amid the snualid surround- ings of savagery, men of high scholarship and special- ists in departmental science. Of ti-ese was Father Sigis- mundo Taravel, a pioneer of the Palifomia missions. In 1729 he established the mission of St. Rose, near the Bay of Palms. Before volunteering for the California BY PATH ARD TKAIL. 97 miiiiionH he wan b profesBor in the Univeriity of Alcala Spam, and when be entered the de«crt and mountain »ol. itndes of th.» peninsula wa« in the prime of hix young manhood. He wn» dowered with exceptional talentH, and when rammi.»ioned by his superior, Father Kchivari, to collect material for the history of the land and its inbabi- tants he brought to the discharge of his task exceptional mdnstry unflagging patience and great ability. For twenty-three years he remained in Lower California in- strncting and Christianizing the tribes around the »,,vof Falms and visiting the most remote corners of thc'po- mnsula m quest of material for his history He took the altitude of mountains, determined the courses of un- derground rivers, made a geodetic survey of the south- ern end of the peninsula, and gave names to manv of the bays and miets. Broken in health, he retired to the Jes- uit college at Guadalajara, Mexico, where he compk-ted his histonr in manuscript. From this vo'aminous work, FaUiers Clavigero and Vinegas and less kr^.wn writers on Lower California, drew much of the mat r.al for their publications. 1 have centered upon this digression that you may nn derstand the reliability and accuracy of the infornmtion we inherit beanng on the daily life and habits of a peo- ple which I believe, to have been the most degraded known to history. ^f5>n"«j There are certain disgusting details entering into the .ocial life and habits of this unhappy and abandoned people which I dare not touch upon. Even the barbar- ous tnbes of Sinaloa and Sonora, from their privileged lands and hunting grounds across the gulf, looked down npon the half-starved creatures, and held them in detes- 98 BY PATH AND TBAIL. tation, as did the Puritans the wrecks of humanity that occupied the soil of Massachusetts. The Europeans of Otondo's time, who attempted, in 1C83, to open a settlement on the Peninsula, were aston- ished at a condition of savagery lower than they had ever henrd of, and their disgust and horror with the land and iti people were so great that they abandoned their inten- tion of remaining in the country. Powerless from the awful conditions under which they were compelled to support existence, knowing nothing of cultivation of any kind, doomed to imprisonment in a land carrying an anathema of sterility and where large game had become extinct, the tribes of Lower California, among all the barbarous and savage people of America, "trod the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God, the Almighty." The greater part of the peninsula at the time of the coming of the fathers, was in possession of the Cochimis, the Gualcuris and the Pericuis, who occupied the south- ern part and some of the adjacent lands. They were a long haired, wild-looking people, scorched into negro blackness, naked and not ashamed. Morals, in the technical sense, they had none, they could not be charged with sin, for they had no knowledge of the law, and therefore they could commit no breach of the law. They bored holes in the ears, lips and nose, inserting in the openings bones, shells or sticks. They bore only names of common gender, which they received while yet in the womb. Without fixed abodes they roamed the country in search of food, supporting life on snakes, roasted grasshoppers and ants, on wild fruit and roots dug from the cacti beds, and because of this rooting habit they were called by the Spaniards "Cavadores"— theDig- BY PATH AND TBAIL. 99 gers. Here is what Father Ugarte writes of the things on which they sustained life: "They live on rats, mice and worms, lizards and snakes, bats, grasshoppers and crickets; a kind of harmless green caterpillar, about a firger long, on roots and barks and an abominable white worm, the length and thickness of one's thumb." x^ather Clavigero adds they never washed themselves, and that m their filthiness they surpassed the brutes. Their hair was crawling with vermin, and their stupidity was so dense that they could not count beyond five, and this number they expressed by one hand. The different tribes. Father Basgert tells us, represented by no means rational beings, but resembled far more herds of wild swine, which run about according to their own liking, be- ing together to-dayand scattered to-morrow, till theymeet again by accident at some future time. They had no mar- riage ceremony, nor any word in their language to express marriage. Like birds and beasts they paired off accord- ing to fancy. They practiced polygamy, each man taking as many wives as would attach themselves to him, they were his slaves and supported him. Their forebears had exterminated or driven into the inaccessible mountain canyons the larger game of the peninsula, the deer, the antelope, the big-horn, the ibex. They tracked the flight of buzzards, with greedy eyes, and followed to share with them the putrefying carcasses of animals dead from dis- ease or killed by pumas or mountain lions. When, by good luck, they captured a hare or a jack- rabbit, they attached a small morsel of the raw and bleed- ing flesh to a fiber cord and, after swallowing it, drew it out after a few minutes, and passed the partially di- gested mass to another, who repeated the foul act. Yet they were not cannibals, and in abstaining from human i'H 100 BY PATH AND TBAIL. Besh offered a striking contrast to the Aztecs of Mexico City, who, fed on human flesh, cut and salted the bodies of prisoners captured in battle and sold the meat at the public markets. They were a fierce and savage nation, without law, tribal rules or government of any kind, un- ruly and brutal in their passions, mercilessly cruel to their enemies, were more gregarious than social and of a cold blooded disposit'u n often manifested in treachery, in relentless persecutions and in assassinations. Oton- do's colonists charged them in addition with asinine stu- pidity, ingratitude, inconstancy and irredeemable lazi- ness. The Jesuit fathers wrote more kindly of them, they condoned their bestiality and shameless licentious- enss by reason of their squalid surroundings and sordid conditions, but then we must remember that from the day the Jesuits opened their first mission among them, the "Digger Indians" became their spiritual children and wards of the church. This was the land and these the people to whom, in their unexampled abandonment and unspeakable degeneracy, the missionary priests of the Society of Jesus brought the message of salvation, the hope of happiness in this life and the assurance of a resurrection to a higher and better life beyond the grave. Now it may be asked why I have dwelt at such length on this unpleasant subject, why I have pictured so grue- somcly, even if truthfully, the disgusting habits of a foul and filthy people! I have done so that those who now read this work may learn and understand what man- ner of men they were who, for Christ's sake and for the sake of perishing souls, said "good-bye" forever to their friends at home, to all tliat men in this world value and prize, to the teeming vineyards of sunny Spain, to ease, comfort and the delights of companionship with re- BY PATH AND TRAIL. 101 anlj to the horrors of hourly association with revolting with hlthy and uuhosp.table hordes. The "Disgor In dmn was a man, so was the priest. The Digger Indian tne letTlf tf '," *f' '?'''' ""' '° ''""^^ '-'-- "''0- hero and to the plane of the saint. What conspiracy of accidents, what congeries of events, what causes ca- bined to make a brute of one and a civili.ed and an iion- rover"5 , ''' '"^'"■- '''^"' ""-^'^i-d passions, ungoverned will, unregulated desires, coutempi for ai aw human and divine in the beginning and then entire gnorance of it, and finally well-nigh desperate cond'! tions of existence and almost utter destitution and,there- fore impossible conditions of civilization, made the Di ""d the saint f of the priest were barbarians, and on the downward road to savagery. When Pope Imiocent I., eai-.y in the fifth cen ury, sent his missionaries to civilize and preach the doctrines of our Divine Lord to the Spaniards and those tLuH 71 P'°" "• '^'y ^«'-«' "^ ^« learn 'rom the letter of the Pop„ to Deceutius, given over to foul- on' T .. '7'" '5 "^ '^"°"°^- "^^^ "'^"^1^ lifted them out of their degradation, civilized and Christianized natfon " '^t ^'^T'l' """""^^ '""^^^ "- i-eroie nation. The same church with her consecrated mis- sionaries was leading out from the shadow of death the Digger Indians and would have made a civilized and Chnstian community of them if she had been left for fifty years m undisturbed possession of the field :1 I CHAPTEK XII. THE JESUITS AND THE DIGOEB INDIANS ou race Han an IT'' *". "generate and humanize =11 fi J '^^ disquisitions of philosophers and al he discourses and writings of mo^ralists'^^iuce thj auc furnisa us examples of the influence on their souls of he grace and teaching of the divine Master But pa teularly do we expect from those whom Cicero aZd divine men and whom we honor with the exa edti le o^ priests lessons of sublime abnegation, of pu ty of Jife and when the occasion demands it, ;f hero fsacrifice ot our race the centuries proclaim since the resurrection of our Lord the sanctity and heroism of vast num." oJ aZZlZ "^ T "'" ^""""^-^ *''^"- g-erations Ld died confessors and martyrs. Of these were the m.m bers of the missionary orders of the church and am", them were many of the order established by l^Zl 104 BY PATH AND TRAIL. Loyola for the conversiou of the heathen and the sav- "'^The Jesuit fathers on the American missions showed to the world an example of missionary zeal a sublime enthusiasm, a steadiness of perseverance, of suft.nng and of persecution heroically borne with a hope and resignation which, while memory lives, wUl enorcle their uamTwith a halo of glory. "No deeds." says Cicero "are more laudable than those which are done without ostentation and far from the sight of men." Buried in the solitude of great wastes or amid the desolation of towering sierras, away from the temptations of vain glory, they become dead to the world and possessed tteir souls in unalterable peace. "Maligners may tauut the Jesuits if they will," writes Parkman "^.th credu- lity superstition and blind enthusiasm, but slander it- self cannot accuse then, of hypocrisy or «>"l»tion^ We have already learned something of the awful de- gradation of the tribes. Allow me to anticipate the seri- ous nature of the struggle the missionaries w-ere now en- gaged in by an extract from a sketch of the Sonora mis- sion, written by one then laboring among the tribes ■'The disposition of the Indians," writes the Priest, •'rests on .our foundations, each one worse than the other, and thev are ignorance, ingratitude, inconstancy and laziness. Their ignorance is appalling and causes them CO act as children. Their ingratitude is such that whoever wishes to do them good, must arm himself with the firm resolution of looking to God for his reward, for should he expect gratitude from them he is sure to meet with disappointment. Their laziness and horror of all kind of work, is so great that neither exhortation, nor prayers, nor the threat of punishment are sufficient to BY PATH AKD IBAIL. 105 prevail upon them to procure the necessaries of life by tilling their own lands; their inconstancy and want of resolution is heart-breaking." And now it may interest my readers to be informed of the methods and the discipline of reclamation fol- lowed by the missionary fathers when dealing with sav- ages either in northern Canada or on the shores of the i-acihc. Religious and moral teaching naturally under- aid their system. They attached supreme importance to oral teachmg and explanations of the doctrines of the church, Iterating, reiterating and repeating till they were satisfied their instructions had penetrated into the obtuse brains of their swarthy hearers, lodged there and were partially, at least, understood. In the begin- ning ,nd to attract them to the divine offices and instruc- fions they fed them after the services were over. They were dealing with "bearded children," as one of the fathers wrote and as there was only a child's brain in a man s body they were compelled to appeal to their imagination, their emotions and affections rather than to their intellects. Having in a measure won their good will they began to teach the children, singing, reading and writing. They composed catechisms in the native dialects, msisted on the children memorizing the chac- ters which the fathers with heroic patience explained and unfolded. They now established a children's choir, introduced into the services lights, incense, processions, genuflex- ions beautiful vestments, the use of banners and flowers for the purpose of decoration. They brought from Mex. ico, sacred pamtings and the stations of the cross which they used not alone as incentives to devotion but as ob- ject lessons in religion. The rude and simple chapels .. H lOf. BY PATH AND TRAIL. which they built with the holp of their newly made con- verts were not only templcn where the holy sacrifice was offered and prayers said, Init they hecoine contsecrated kindergartens where the altar, the crucifix, the way of the cross and the painting of the Last .ludgnient taught their own lessons. By pictures, by music, by art and song, and symbolic representations, by patience and af- fection they developed the stupid minds and won over the callous hearts of these benighted children of the desert. The fathers in time choose from their converts assistants known as Temastranes, who taught catechism to the children, acted as sacristans and explained from time to time the rudiments of religion to the pagan In- dians. They appointed for every congregation a choir master, known as the maestro, who could read and write, was comissioned to lead the singers, male and female, and teach others to play on musical instruments. In time they became enamored with their work and the progress they were making, so much so indeed that one of the fathers writes: "It is wonderful how these Indians, who can neither read nor write, learn and retain two, three or four different masses, psalms, chants of the of- fice of the dead, chants for Holy Week, vespers for festi- vals, etc." Then when the fathers succeeded in gather- ing them into communities and the children, under their fostering care, had grown into young men and women, they taught them different mechanical trades and many of the Indians became tailors, carpenters, tillers of the soil, blacksmiths, butchers, stone cutters and masons. "I know," writes the author of the "Rudo Ensayo," "sev- eral Opates and Eudebes who can work at all these trades and who now play on musical instruments with no little skill." It has always taken centuries to graft BV I'ATII AND TRAIL. 11)7 upon siiviiRery nnytliiiiK iippnuuliiiiK a high eivilizntion, yet 111 thirty yoar.s tliuso devmit priests had clmiiKed thesf ehil.lren of the desert and tlie mountain from eat- ers of raw meat, stone too! users aad Krinch'rs of aeorn meal in rocl< bowls to tillers of the soil, weavers of elotli, workers in metal, players on musical instruments nud smgers of saered hynms. Tlie eonseeruted man who entered ui>on the territory of n savage trihe to make to tlie owners of the soil ii proclamation of the will of Jesus Christ, knew from the history of tiie past that he might be murdered while de- livering his message. His mission illnr wlint was n trill.' to mo, Imt a Kn.lscn.l to htT »nd her family; upon which, without tlmuk.uK uio exci'l't I'v a <'"ii>-tooH8 iucliiuitioii of the hfiiil, she wont up to the hiKl' nltar, foUowod l.y hor ohihlrou to roturn thanks to 00.1. Now all this mittlit ho vory iKuorant re- ligion to an Aniorioan I'rot.'stant. hut to m.' it was true religion, an.l, what was nioro.un example of sinocro faith. She trusted that (lod would supply what she wanted, she knew that he had said ahout his house heinK the house of praver an.l she eauu' to that house in faith to ask him for' help in her troubles; an.l when she .sot what she wanted she evidently believed that her prayer ha.l been heard, and therefore did not thank me, whom she con- sidered merely the instrument, but God who had sent My companion and guide from the town of .losus Maria was a quiet, honest representative of the Mexi.nn half-breeds to be met with in almost every vili..„o ol tins peninsula. , , "Tell me, Ignacio," I said to him in a solemn tone, late in the evening when we were coming out of an ugly ra- vine, "tell me of this La Llorona wlu haunts the moun- tain paths and the lonely roads leading to the townsi* i. she worse than the Vacn de Lumhre, the gleaming cow, that at midnight suddenly appears on the Plaza del Ig- lP«i:i and after a moment's pause bounds f..rward, and with streams of fire and flame flowing from hor eyes and nostrils, rushes like a blazing whirlwind through the village." , "Ah senor, she is worse, indeed she is worse than the fiery cow, for it is known to everybody that while the vaca is" terrible to look at, and on a dark night it is aw- ful she never does harm to any one. The little children, BV PATH AND TRAIL. in too, arc all in Iwd and asleep, when the Vhivi .!<• I.iiiiiliio appeurx, ami it is only us gruHn pooph. that >i .• h.'i- iiiiil that not often. But the weepiuK woman imlee.l is hariii- ful; it is well, senor, that we all know her when >ii.. a))- IK'Rfs, and we are so afraid of her that no nne will .^ay yes or no to her when she speaks, and It is well. .Many queer things and ninny evil spirits, it i.s known to us all, are around nt night and they are angry, when on dark nights there ia thunder and rain and lightning, hut the ■\yailing Woman is the worst of all of them. Sometimes, sir, sliL is out of her head and is running, her hair streaming after her and she is tossing her liamls almve her head and shrieking the names of her lost , or sexfon, U e mason of the village. Xot knowing at ho timo thai 1 was addressing the cura or parish pries i. -' asked b.m how all these people were paid. "Paid?" said the reverend hodman, "why, they al' belong to this parish." "Yes," I replied, "but how are they paid?— I mean," continued I, hesitating and turning over in my mind what was Spanish for church rates or dues, '•how do you raise the money to pay all these people their day's wages f ' ' The hodcarrier laughed. "Why," he spoke back, and I now from his face and accent began to suspect he was somebody, "why, you do not pay people for doing their own work. It is the house of God, their own church which they are repairing. It is mine, it's theirs, it is their children's. Until the church is ready we have no place to assemble to pray to God and publicly to offer np to him the holy sacrifice. There will be no work done by us till we have repaired God's temple, our own church." Who was it who wrote : " 0, f or the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of the voice that is still." And for the simple piety and child-like faith of the days of old. In the presence of this example of rugged faith and zeal for the house of God on the part of this priest and his flock I called back to my mind the ages of faith and the sublime heroism and devotion of the early Christians. Beyond a doubt the church was theirs. Not a day did these simple people go to their work till they had assisted at the mass offered up by the priest who was now, as a hodman, helping in the rebuilding of their temple. Not a time did any of them start out on a long .ioumey without first receiving holy communion from the hands of this 114 BY PATH AND TRAIL. man of God. Yes, and many a time, too, when sickness entered the home or when trouble came to some one of the family, might you see an anxious wife or trembling mother kneeling before the tabernacle, who had stolen away from the noise and distractions of home, and had come unto the altar of God to pray for herself and her loved ones. To these honest souls their church was as necessarj' as their sleeping rooms or their kitchens and was used as much. When it was blown down they felt the want of it as much as they did that of their own houses. The church was always open and they came and went when and as often as they liked. Surely it was their church and they made good use of it. I remember well the day I came down from the Sier- etta mountains and was passing on foot through the little city of Aguas Colorauas, the church of which was well worth seeing. I had my camera and field glasses hang- ing from my shoulders, some few samples in a canvas bag, was wearing a suit of rough khaki and was not alto- gether the figure for the inside of a church. "What shall 1 do with these things?" I said to my guide. "Put them down here on the church steps," said he. Now these church steps projected into the market place, which at that time was full of all sorts of rough- looking people. I laughed and said, 'T had much rather not put such a temptation in the way of Mexican hon- esty." "Well," answered my guide, "there is no doubt that the people of Aguas Coloradas are the greatest rogues unhung" (he belonged himself to a neighboring parish, and like all members of little communities was narrow enough to be jealous of his neighbor's prosperity), 1 m BV PATU AND TRAIL. 115 "your excellency is perfectly right, they are the great- est rogues unhung. But they are not so" bad as to steal from God." I put my things on the steps and after the lapse of an hour I found them, and along with them some eight or ten baskets of fruit and vegetables, which the market people had left there while they went in to say their prayers, all of which though looking very tempting, though entirely unguarded, except by the unseen pres- ence of God, were as safe as if they had been under lock and key. Is there a church in any city of America whose sanctity would protect day and night articles left ex- posed before its door? If not, why not.' WOXDEBFUL CRUCIFIX. Very much to my surprise I discovered in the sacristy of the (piaint little church of this primitive village a du- plicate of .Julian Garces' famous copy on glass of "The Dead t'hrist." Garces painting from the original hangs in the baptistry of an ancient church on the Calle San Pablo, Mexico City, and is never exhibited to visitors save on request. It is a wonderful painting on ghss, thrilling in its awful realism and impossible, once seen, ever to be forgotten. It was copied many years ago by the Dominican painter, Julian Garces, from the original painting on wood, carried to Spain, when the religious orders were suppressed by the Mexican government in 18:29. This wonderful painting on wood is now preserved in the con- vent of the discalced Order of St. Francis, Bilboa, Spain. It is known as the crucifix of the devil, and intimately associated with it is a curious and touching legend. Early in the seventeenth century Mexico City was the Paris of the Latin-American world. It possessed great m llr * 4 116 BY PATH ASD TBAIL. ! t n , wealth for the mines of Mexico were literally pouring r„t suUr Its reputation for gaiety, for the beauty and vS of its senoritas, for its variety of amusements Td fo the splendor of its climate, attracted to its hos- pHable clubs'many of the rollicking and advent..ou youth of Spain. Among them was a young man of noWe lirth, who at once flung himself into the -'"^ P- °* dissipation that eddied in the flowing "--..^'Jo- able amusements. In a few years ^e -» '^d >''\-P''J" ■„ n fnst life and i'. wild debauchery. Ltteriy Tn d Tn P0?U^t and in ct.it, he determined to end it aU n suTcide He was returning from the Spanish casino Tfter losing heavily at a game of cUance, wl.n the thought of self-destruction possessed h m. He was re olvfng in his mind the easiest way leading from earth-- owhfre-"To helU" he muttered. Then he entered ™„n another line of thought. He had read and heard of Tn in desperate circumstances asking and receivmg help from the devil. himself ..PU be damned anyhow," he argued ^^'1^ l""^^;^'' "and I may as well have a few more years on earth be- fore going down into the pit." Much to l'-/"yP"^«' when he entered his chambers he found taem lighted up i a Wr awaiting him. The man who rose to greet Wm was in simple citizen's dress, and uncommon y like T. of hose curb brokers who are so numerous in our . o^day. "I understand, sir," said the stranger, "that you wish my services." "Who are yout" asked the Spaniard. .'I am the partv who, many hundreds of years ago said to'he founde'r of your religion: "AU these will I give thee, if, falling down, thou wilt adore me. "The Devilt" !' By PATH AND THAII,. 117 "The same, at your service." A bargain was (luickly made. In e.xehange for his soul by a document to be duly signed and delivered, the prodi- gal was to receive more money than was uecessarv to re- establish his fortune; and to enjoy until the dissolution of us natural body, all that he desired, all that earth could offer him; sensual deMght, influence, a distin- guished career in society, the intoxication of power in short all tliat gold could purchase and secure. However the Spanird was no fool, and before he attached his sig- nature to the fatal contract, he wished to be satisfied that he was face to face with the Master of Hell, the Eebel Lucifer. "Before I sign this parchment, mav I ask you a few questions?" "Certainly," replied Satan. wil'hTr"' fZ' •'■""/" ^^""^"' ^""^ '""S have you dealt with the children of Adam ? " "Since that day I laughed at God, when in the Garden ot Jiden, I seduced Eve." JJ!\'v/7r'"""l '"'^'' ■"'* '" ""^ ^^"'°g y^^^' of His mortal lite Him whom men style Christ?" defeats He inflicted on my friends and for the insults He offered to me I gave Him blow for blow " "Were you present when He hung on the Cross of Cal- vary between a murderer and a thief, and did you wit- nes,s Ins awful agony and ignominious death?" I was of all the crowd that mocked Him and laughed at Him when He hung on the wood, the most pleased wit- ness Why, I inspired the fools who nailed Him to the wood^ It was I who tempted Judas, the Iscariot, to be- tray Hun; I inspired the Hebrew priests to insult Him another to sp,t upon Him, and my friend Pilate, who now occupies a conspicuous place in my kingdom, to scourge 118 BY PATH AND TBAIL. H I Him. and m. Him to tUe ^^^^^^^Z^ fool, would not l>«^'^^^,lPPf „^7' P;,cepter and a scar- -!— ^i^'^s^'r-dr.'^s s:.r-?^SMV=t-^^^^^^^^^^ .could yo. ^^^^iiz';^::z:"LtaU''^y f/Te'^d 'AU " on-mmated ,• and when dark- 'ut^^faui on calvary and Jeru.alemr- :^^, :" I beseech you, before I J«n_ our com- of tenderness, of '"^"'tPf™"^ .„eply graven in the boundless e-P--^^^^" ^r ng t^^^^ "' -^- flesh, were Unes "^/jf"^;" TCIpaniard, as he ga^ed row and sustamed agony ^j^^ ^ ^ ; ^..^bled as upon the "Santo Bostro,' *!>« ^'J?";;^;^ The eyes of trembles the man to whom the de^d speak. ^^^^ J^ ^^_ the Holy F^'^^^-'f «^;t t vet dl^i, but whose body lay fore a Christ ^^t^'.'^tl ' d was ')ouring from a gash U.P, a"d/-YSi*g Srouids in'the head and in the side and tncklmg irom ^ ^^j, ^^"'^•v'"rafhto?rd^^t-ur^^ SrS Tt SI figure'were so heart-rending BY PATH AND TBAIL. 119 in their terrible realism, the look of the agonized Ciuei- fied so appealing and so full of love that tears of sym- pathy welled from the eyes of the libertine. Then before and hiding the face of the Christ, he saw the face of his mother, and the eyes that looked their last upon him when she lay upon her bed of death in their home in .Madrid Bushmg past his tempter, the young Castilian flung him- self at the feet of the Christ and cried aloud: "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me." When, sobbing and broken-hearted, he rose erect he was alone with the dead Christ and the unsigned compact. JULIAN GARCES' COPY. In Garces' painting on glass, the dying Christ stands out m full relief with no perspective. Behind the cross all is darkness save alone a thread of lightning, snake- like and forked. Over Calvary the sky is lurid and of a dull red, whoc» Tiery hue in portentous, lugubrious and awe-inspiring. The body of the dying Savior, the little board above the cross, with its prophetic inscription: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews;" and parts of the cross which the Divine Body did not cover, alone occupy space. Beyond and around them nothing, onlv the black- ness of ebon darkness. Save the ribbon of" snake-like hghtnmg coming out of and piercing the impenetrable darkness, there is nothing; not a ray of light anywhere no mark of a horizon, naught but the body of the Man- God, the gibbet and— night, moonless and starless. But the isolation of the Figure on the lone Cross, the pitiable solitude encompassing the Crucified, the blood oozing from the frayed wound and trickling down the pallid flesh, and the Divine Face from which expression, anima- tion and life itself are lingeringly departing, appeal to 120 BV PATH AND TBAIL. the heart and the imagination, and we are overwhelmed F with pity and sympathy. ! If we are familiar with the Holy Scriptures we hear I the patnetic cry of Isais: "There i. no beauty in Him now, nor comeliness ' * despised, a man of sorrows. • * * His look was as it were hidden I ^'"^le'was led as a sheep to the slaughter and He did i not open His mouth." „i,„„Wa \ "I have given my body to the scourgers, and m> cheeks i to the strikers ; I have not turned away my face from \ them that rebuked me, and spat upon me." A\ e cal up f thHropbetic words of the inspired writer of the Psalms. I ''iZ poured out like water: they have dug my hands """-JreV gave me gall for my food, and in my tiurst they gave me' vinegar to drink: My God, My God, bast thou forsaken me!" We listen to Jeremias speaking with the voice of the Victim of Divine Love sacrificed before our very eyes: "My tabernacle is laid waste, all my cords Ire brLn; my children have abandoned me, and they "e not: th^re is none to stretch forth my tent any more: ' WH!fweTand with eyes fastened on the solitary and bleeding Figure, we see Him die. He is dead! From His handHrom Hi^ head fallen away from the dead muscles and resting on the naked breast, from the gaping wound madlby the soldier's lance, the blood no longer flows^ ?he body is bloodless, but between the muscles, through the delicate and transparent skin, one may count the bones of the Crucified, one might number the pulsations of the heart before it ceased to beat. I ( CHAPTER XIV. THE PBADERA A.ND GUASO BEDS. From my first chapter on Lower California I mar have left the mipression on the minds of mv readers that the ent.rc peninsula is a waste of desolation or thst .m anathema of sterility had withered the whole country This would not l>e the truth. As ^o near the southwest- ern coast the land struggles to shed more vegetation and we begm to experience a mild, soft and almost langurous air_ The palo verde, the mesquite, the giant sahuaros and many varieties of the cacti gradually appear. Along the eastern coast the land is yet more covered with mesquite trees, and malma and bunch grass above which looms the columnar pithahaya. The mesas or table lands of sand have here and there groo and gramma grasses, i hen, as we cfimb the mountains we meet scrub oak and lull jump,- till at an elevation of 6,000 feet we eater the pine lands. Owing to the peculiarity of the river beds winch run through loose quarternary deposits the water which flows down the mountains during the rainy seasons disappears in the porous earth, seeks under- ground channels, and after following its subterranean course for many miles, is lost entirely or comes again to the surface where the older formation rises or is crossed by a dyke forming a natural dam By reason of the clearness of the atmosphere and the absence of all foreign substances in the air distances are deceptive and appearances delusive. Small objects, such as (he outlines of an isolated mound, the face of a pro- jecting rock or a browsing steer loom large and stand > > 1*2 UY PATH AND IBAIL. out Sharp nn« 1> 'U and vallovs, all clearly outlined. The csearptnent of the San Juan .nountains, 100 mies to the north o the hdl on which I was standing, seemed but twenty m.les away, an,l fr.,>u the highest peak of the Cerita "^'"'K'^"" " ^^^- elear . but here, once planted, they demand no further iiilcntii)n. There are here stretches of land where in the dry, hot and rari- fied air meats, eggs, fish and fowl remain luitulnted for days. Back of the ancient and historic town of Loretto — with which I will deal in another i)lace— there is a valley of contradiction, full of fa.«cinntion to the eye to-day, anil to-morrow a land of desolation and of horror. ' It is called "La Pradera Honda," the deep meadow, from its marvelous wealth and coloring of vegetation at certain seasons and times. The Pradera reposes between two menacing ranges of barren mountains wliich yet retain the ancient marks left by the waters when the desert was an inland lake. When I saw "La Pradera" a few days ago it was under a shroud of sand, and of ashes that the angry volcanoes of the mountains had, long ago, vomited upon it. Turning to my Mexican companion and extending my hand toward the Prada, I ask^d: "Is there any life there?" "Si, senor," he answered, "there is life there, but it is life that is death to you and me. You see these intermittent and miniature forests of bisnoga and cienga cacti? They shade and protect from the fierce rays of a burning sun the deadly rattlesnake, the homed snake that strikes to kill, the kangaroo rat, the tarantula, the 124 DY PATH AND TRAIL. ■ chawalla, the white Bcorpion, tlic arena centiiwdo, lizard* and poiBonous HpidcrH." Tlie 8un beat down upon the deadly silence, upon the dull gray floor of the desert where the Imnihed blades of the yuira bristled stitT in the hot, sandy waste. But before cominR here I h.ul hear.l of anoth-.r and more wonderful life than tlie reptile e.xisteiii'e dwelt upon by my friend. There are times when torrential storms of rain rage fiercelv amouK the mountains bordenuK this nrid land or a driftiuR cloud loaded with water strikes a towerinR peak. When these thiniss happen, rivers ot water flow madlv down the furrows worn in the lace ot the great hills, and, hitting the desert, separate into sheets of liquid refreshment which give life and beaut.v to desolation and aridity. They come, ,«nys the inspired writer, bv the command of God. "to satisfy the desolate and waste ground and to cause the seed in the parched earth to spring forth." Then the ashen white waste is all aglow with myriad blossoms, and the desert sands are covered with a most beautiful carpet of wonderful flowers for many of which the science of botany has no name. „ „. Of all these plants that bloom in this vale of Hinom, perhaps, the most pleasing to the eye are the flowers of the cacti, and the rapidity with which their dry ami ap- parently dead stalks throw out beautiful blossoms after their roots are watered, is one of the marvels of the des- ert The cacti of La Pradera are an annual manifesta- tion of the realism of death and resurrection and, as the plants come into fullest bloom in early spring, this desert •it the time of Easter is one vast circular meadow where the rarest and most beautiful flowers have risen from their graves as if to glorify the resurrection of tlieir BV I'ATH AStl TRAIL. 125 Lorfl anJ M««U.r Tl... i,.w..st ,„,.! ,„„.t wo.ulorful flower ot tl».m „ll grows, 1 „,„ ,„|.,, „„ „„ „„,,, ,,,„,, mis«i,«,...„ ..„<.tus wl.i,.|,. for ..|,.v..„ ,„onths of ih,. v,.,„' u o a I outw«r.I .sc-miuK, .i.ud, hut when il, roots ar« Y'--H hloo.ns «„|. M.|.r,.,„H.v .|,.|i..nt,. ,„„| ,v„xv p.a. al». Ihor.. IS another .nctus, n loiv .rcepinK l.h'.nt of roun. trunk and poi„t..,l stou,, repellent as a M.ake. ami Uglj to look upon which, at ahoiit the time of the vernal e.,u,nox, is eovere,! wth l„i,e pi„k .lowers, heautiful as oreluls am IraK'rant as the fairest rose in inv la.lv's garden. Then l,y the sides, and hetweon the Me.xiean agaves and the white pinnied > luraswitl, treii,l,|i„B -erri- ated leaves, are .scattered in luxuriant piodiKalitv ..o- umbines, phlo.ve.s, verhenas and as maiiv as twenU- o, knowledge of liotuny supplies no names I ..fortunately, for the pre.sent. the names „f „„,„,. „,■ these rare speeles are not known even to our profe.ssional hotauists. „«d the common varieties of those which are , lassified, and found in other parts of ralifornia hear no s,„ I, fnscinat- mg and gorgeous array of flowers as those indigenous to • 16 "Pradera" desert. The Islamis of Ht. Oeorge olf the east coast of O.e Pemnsula of Cal.lornia are a singular group of s.p.eezed or lifted rocks on which the dew never settles and where ram never falls for years. These are the famous -.ook- erj- islands ' where, for uncounted years, enormous num- bers of birds of the sea and of the land have b.iilt tl.eif nests, deposited their eggs and hatched their voung By some mysterious law o-' instinet and .selection the birds, fron. the heg.nning. alloted small islands and sections on the larger islands to the different species of the feather- ed race, so that the sea birds, like the frigate i>elicans r ^1 126 BY PATH AND TRAIL. A i\,^ liltP have their own allotments ly obscured l>y t"^^. """""f . ,„!„ detachments, reach They fly in battaUons, or in o™"^ ^^ ^ i^^^dred the feeding grounds on and o-: -t^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ,,„eh of they rise aga^^- --J^ ^pprrtL Ueries they ^r:tb"i:::^^.e|.cans.shrijs^^ ^---^S£a^^^^^ deposit, saturated w^th a—^ -J P^-I-^^^fl; ^y called guano and, ^1^««^^^,*."™„; '\,"ehted to the sea Chinese coolies, loaded "^^^^f^^^,^ ™*eYed and sold ports of Europe, where it is ^-^f ^^^ " ^^^ds. On phosphates. CHAPTER XV. ORiaiN OP THE PIOUS FUND. Felicien Pascal, the French publicist, devotes an ar- ticle in Le Monde Modern, to an explanation of the mis- sionary success of the Society of Jesus, the mombers of which are known to us as Jesuits. It is rather excep- tional for a French freethinker to write calmly and dis- passionately of a religious association whose creed and manner of life are in direct antithesis to his own. Much has been written at various periods in their history of the "secrets" of the Jesuits; but, asserts Mr. Pascal, "the great secret of their strength is their sublime disci- pline. To this discipline the Jesuits have always owed their marvelous power and their aceeptabilty as a chosen body of Tiighly trained specialists among the ruling classes of Europe and in the savage wilds of Africa and America." Mr. Pascal is experimenting with a social and histori- cal fact and is disposed to deal honestly and dispassion- ately with its origin. Having no faith in the super- natural, it was not to be expected that the French sociol- ogist would look beyond the human and the natural for the solution of a great problem. Unquestionably he is right as far as he goes or his negations will permit him to go. St. Paul, the prototype of all missionaries, writ- ing to the Corinthians, recounts for their edification his own sufTerings and sorrows, his "perils in the wilder- ness, in labor and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and naked- ness." Further on, this extraordinary man, "called to 128 BY PATH AND TRAIL. be an apostle out of due time," tells us why, according to men of the world, he was a fool. "I take pleasure m my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecu- tion in distresses-for Christ's sake." On another oc- casion when writing to the Christians at Home, he says that to men of the type of Mr. Pascal, the heroism of martyrs, confessors and missionaries, is foolishness; that It is impossihle for the natural or worldly man to understand the things that are of the kingdom of God^ And now, let me record for the edification of my read- ers the deeds of fraternal love and self-denial wrought among the savage tribes of this unhospitable land centu- ries ago by men whose heroism and success, Mr. Pascal and men like him try to explain by human disciplme and human organization. In an earlier chapter I dwelt pass- ingly on the attempt of the Spaniard Otondo to establish a settlement on the shores of the Bay of La Paz. For eighteen months the Spanish colonists tilled and coaxed a sandy soil and thev reaped cactus, sage brush and dis- appointment. During these eighteen months not one drop of rain fell upon the soil, now dry and parched as the tongue of Dives. Otondo, in disgust, broke up the settlement, called off his men and sailed away for Man- zanillo. , -. m, i With Otondo's colonists, when they left Lhalca, Sinoloa, went three Jesuit priests, one as cartographist to the expedition, and the two others as missionaries to t'le natives. They now pleaded to be permitted to re- main with the tribes, for already they were mastermg the language and dialects and had under instruction nearlv four hundred adults and children. Father Copart had alreadv begun the composition of a "doctrina" or short catechism in the native dialects. He experienced BY PATH AND IBAIL. 129 much trouble, he tells us in a letter written to a clerical friend, in finding words and idioms to explain the doc- trines of Christianity, but with the heli) of the chi.dreu he got on fairly well. The fathers asked to be left with the tribes, but Otondo declared that he could not take upon himself the responsibility of leaving a solitary iiuropeau on the accursed shore and insisted on the priests returning to Mexico with him. Thus ended the first attempt to found a settlement la Lower California. What a singular fatalitv fol- lowed in the wakes of nearly all the first settlements on the coasts of North America, italcigh's planta- tion in Virginia was abandoned after four years of dis- appointment and heart-breakings, though Grenville the partner of Kaleigh, said the land was "the goodliest soil under the cope of heaven." The first settlement in New England was even shorter lived and Goswald and Popham brought back their colonists from Maine, as did Otondo from California. The story of the hardships and sufferings from cold and .scurvy of the first French set- tlers on the St. Charles is paralleled by the history of Vizcaino's voyage and landing in the Bay of Monterey. Twenty years afterOtondo 's failure England called oil its first contingent of settlers from Tangiers. La Salle, the explorer, and one of the grandest men that ever trod the American continent, was shot by his own men and his dream of colonization ended. The pioneer Scotch colony at Darien failed absolutely, as did Selkirk's settle- ment in the Canadian Northwest one hundred years ago. The colonization of Lower California, such as it was and is, was finally effected mainly through the persistent efforts and untiring zeal of two Jesuit priests, Eusebio Kino and Gian-Maria Salvatierra. Some day the lives u 130 BY PATH AND TBAIL. ^ Of these heroic and saintly men wUI "« -^t«» ^^^^J^^, rive added dignity and importance to the history S^ristian miss^ns on the continent of A~. (Inoe havine begun the conversion of a savage or Dar Once having g ^.sionaries never voluntarily barous people, «^« •'«^'"; ^„ ^^ ^nd is not now, a advances or with bloody hands welcomed them to hospit at e graves The Society of Jesus is not by "ny mean , tefreatest missionary body to wh ch the Cfholic that he Society of Jesus is on a plane of successful itJ wUh aov organization established since apos- order among English speaking races is, like an unpleas- ant odor, gradually «^aP°«f°f;_ , „ . jj,, j^uure of After reading Otondo's "Report ot tne lauu ,^ceroy to Mexico advised the home government to have fesent^tiS^d Lower California was abandoned to its sag^^„:l, scorpions, tarantulas and naked savages. iflA^M BY PATH AND TRAIL. 131 Despairing of obtaining any help or even encourage- ment from the Snanish or Mexican officials, FatherSalva- tierra now appealed to the zeal and Christian charity of the Spainards in Mexico to assist him in his effort to re- open the mission to the Digger Indians. Father Eusibio Kino, who was with the Otondo expedition, and Father Juan Ugarte flung themselves into the good work and with speech and pen pleaded for the California tribes. It was impossible to resist the call of these men; the piety of their daily lives, the sincerity of their motives, their scholarship, eloquence and heroism awoke enthu- siasm and touched generous, though until now, indiffer- ent hearts. Subscriptions began to move. From far away Queretaro, Padre Cabellero, a priest who inherited parental wealth, sent $10,000. The "Congregation of Our Lady of Sorrows," a confraternity of holy women, promised a yearly sum of $500: Count de Miravalles subscribed $1,000; Pedro Sierrepe of Acapulco gave the fathers a lancha or long boat and offered the loan of his ship for a transport, and from Mexico City and towns in the vice royal provinces came liberal contributions. These generous donations Father Salvatierra formed into a fund, or, as we would say to-day, capitalized for the evangelization of the California Indians and the sup- port of the California missions. Thus began the famous "Fondo Piadoso de California," of which we have heard so much and which involved in its distribution and par- tial settlement two religious orders and three civilized nations, and for which, to quiet a claim against it, the government of the United States lately paid the arch- bishop of San Francisco three bundled and eighty-five thoQsand dollar.s. On the 1.3th of July, 1G97, the ship of Pedro Sierrepe 132 BY PATH AUD laUL. loaded with supplies for the infaut mission sailed out of the harbor of Aeapulco, on the Pacific coast, and pass- ing through the straits of Magellan, finally, after two months of ocean travel, rounded Cape San L^^^s and anchored in the Yaqui bay. Gulf of Cortes, now the Gulf of California. Father Salvatierra, who had come over- land to Sonora, was, with the illustrious Kino, pvmg a mission to the Yaquis when he was informed ot the ar- rival of the ship. Kino made preparations to accom- pany him to Lower California when the Governor of Sonora intervened. * n :„ The provinces of Sinoloa and Sonora were at tlus particular time threatened with an Indian uprising, the governor refused to let Kino leave him, contending that the influence of the priest in controlling the rest- less Yaquis and Mayos was greater than the pres- ence of a thousand soldiers. So Salvatierra sailed alone out of the Yaqul bay and in October landed m Lower California, twenty miles north of the site chosen by Otondo for his unfortunate colony. Like that heroic Canadian missionary, Breboeuf, Salvatierra, when he landed, knelt upon the beach and placing the country under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, evoked the help of God in the work he was abojit to undertake. Then rising he exclaimed aloud, "Mc requiescam, quomam eleaieam"-! will remain here, for I myself have cho- sen it. Af ler the landing of the baggage, the provisions aBd a few domestic animals the party rested for the ^Here is the roster of the first settlement and prac- tically the first Christian mission which led to the civiti- xation of the tribes and the exploration of all California. A Portuguese pick and shovel man called Lorenzo, three Christianized Mexican Indians, a Peruvian mulatto, a BY PATH AM) TSAIL. 133 leZtT " '™'? ^^-x'-'^i"™. one Sidlian and one Maltese, sailors who had served in a I'hilippine galleon and one Jesuit priest, Father Salvatierra n L history of early colonization, in any par, of the ,^,rld there ,s no page recording anything like this or any i: rLrr'". "'r"" ^'^™''"^'>- "o"^"- ma- terial. And yet under the masterful mind of the ,Z Monary, with faith, piety and tact these human fag' ments were welded into a compact body that Zuered a ^tubborn sou and conciliated tribal Opposition.' fellthe h I'r ^^ "!' '"^" "" ^^-^--- ""'l "> ^^-^ brought from Ac T'^^ '^' '"'^"'""<' "">« '^'">-- eTh5A . "P"''''' '" P™'^''' t"^" mission if attack- ed by the natives. The Mexican Indians, under the et the few"' ^r't'" *'" ^ ''^ ""^^ "^ e^-md. look aner the few cattle, sheep and goats brought in th^ shin a!,,! ma pinch, do some fighting. After'hrowing up a t^m t'hebuildWof "' T°« "^ ''"' «™-d. thev beg'n the bmldmg of a rough stone wall around the camp and mission to guard men and animals against the hostiS or covetousuess of the savaees Tht Tr.A- ""f ""y from near and far. and 3 ont^^'Zl^t demonstrations of friendship or dislike ^ I already mentioned that Father Copart of nfn„H.> tJeir wTt . r- 'J T''^'"^ *" ''''" "ff^'^t'ons through tteir wretched and always half-starved stomachs Aft!r ' Cop rr H "T'"' """''''' ^« «ddres d thl m Copart's gntterals, tried to teach them a few Spanish words, and after three months baptized his firlt convTr! 134 liV PATH AX1> TKAIL. _„ cancer victim-to wliom FatluT Copart had given some instruction eleven year, l.el-re T„ tl- >"""-; lage and mission he gave the name o -ore.to he same nunie wi, li Father fhamnonont had hestmved on the Uuie hours outside of (i«e..ec. .hero he sheltered, and where vet dwell the last of the Ilurons. CHAPTER XVI. THE BEPOBE OP THE OBAVE. 1 well remember the afternoon I arrived-after a ride across the mountains of thirty-two mUes-at a turn of the narrow road and, for the first time, looked ^o^ upon the quaint and historically fascinating viUage of Loretto, Lower California. * This is the place. Stand still, my steed, Let me review the scene. And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once had been. Eight generations of human life had come into the world hved their uneventful but singular existence, and ^tJ^ r '"•'"' T' '"''' "'^^y ""'^^ ««'^« ^to had preceded them, since first the Spanish missionary bore a message from the crucified Christ to the most loathsome of men and women that ever walked the earth. Yet thev covUd claim, if they but knew it, kinship with God, the immutable and eternal, through Him whose message of to delis' '' *^' ^P^"'"' Ambassador was sent Unless God the Almighty took away their human and gave them a brute nature, it was impossible for the Digger tidians" or for any human beings to approach nearer to the brute's state. fproacu There existence was a hell of foul licentiousness, of nameless lusts, of hunger, thirst, of disease and phys cal sufrering, and there was no hope for betterment saveTn annihila ion or reconstruction, or rather resurrection The cmhzed and educated man who entered this barren •i 136 BV PATH AKD THAIL. desolation of savagery, and devoted his l.fe and his taU ents to the taming and uplifting of these brutfzed men and women was a fool or a saint. This ."'"ther Saha- tierra, who first came to live and companion with them was a Jesuit priest, and though terrible things have been said and written about the Jesuits, their bitterest ene- mies never pilloried them as fools. "When we have delivered our attacks and exhausted our ammunition on the Jesuits," writes de SlarciUac, "we must, as honorable foes, acknowledge they are, as a body, the greatest scholars and most fearless unssiona- riPs known to the world." When I entered this cnrious little Indian and Mexi- can village, Loretto, I carried with me a sense of rcver- ence for the place and of respect for the memory of he consecrated men whose sublime heroism stli. Mves in the tradition of the simple people. The follow.ng morning after assisting at the sacrifice of the mass offc 1 up by a very dark, half-Indian priest, I entered thr . .preten- tious but weU and cleanly kept graveyard to ,.^ rear of the church. All over the great Republic of Mexico in CUapas, Yucatan, Tabasco, in the states of Central Lnerica wherever I went, I saw many t -gs wh.ch I thought could be improved, but I must confess that their churches were always clean and their graveyards and cemeteries well looked after. The Spaniards like the Ws, ive been given hard knocks, but they were never charged with being an unc ean people. The Latin Americans have inherited cleanliness from the Span- '"to me, who was fairly familiar with the humble but heroic history of Loretto, with the unspeakable degrada- tion of the early tribes and the miracles of rehabilitation BV PATH AND TBAII,. 137 wrough among them by the Jesuit an.I Franci.sonn fa- thers, th,.s consecrated plot of ground was full of con- >oI.ng memories. Here and there u monun.ent of Todos Santos marble hfted itself above a forest of unpreten- t.ous crosses marking the graves of half-castes an.I In- dians. These humble black crosses, with a ribbon of white pamt bordering the black, bore unpronounceable names, the age and the day of the death of the .leceused in Spamsh. Some very few monuments had more elal>. orate mseriptions. but all, marble and wood, carried the Catholic and early Christian "Requiescat in pace"- May he or she rest in peace. Dominating all in magnitude and impressiveness was the great central cross of cedar, the crux sanctorum, in- dicating that the enclosed ground was consecrated and exclusively reserved for the bodies of those who died in umon with the Catholic church and sleep the sleep of TT 7^^ '"."'^e™ bar bore this inscription from the Book of Ecclesiastes : "Corpora sanctorum in pace sepulta sunt: et nomina Eorum vivent in generationem et generationem. " (The Bodies of the Just are buried in peace and their names live from generation to generation.) Further down on the cross was a verse from the Psalms- "Qui seminant in lacrimis in gaudio metent." (Ihose who sow in tears will reap in joy ) A few months before my visit to Loretto, the young daughter of the harbor-master-a very charming ani beautiful girl of seventeen-was drowned in the bav Her body was recovered almost immediately, but for atime It was feared her mother would lose her mind. The af- fection and sorrow of her family are materialized in one ot the most chaste and purest shafts of marble I have 138 UV PATH AND tBAll,. of the young girl •« « ''«f "'^ ;' ,, ..f „ brother and the passion of a lo\ or. m „, ,„„i..r the ■■KfM" «»" chiseled on bis sister's '"o"!""™'' J ^^ ..^ of Inez, eat in pace," Xim.nsez' epitapl' »" «"^ T nslated it would read: Warm southern sun, Shine kindly here; Warm southern wind, Blow gently here; Oreen sod above, Lie light, lie UgW, Oood-night, dear heart, _^ Goou-uight, good-night. ,,,,,„^. anoth^P^to^M^^-I^J^Si^^ rnrs^^vSrinrorr^iS^^^ - ^-^^^ -:i^iS..wo.d.to.sub.^e.^^ cism. But, perveriBu . b _„_;„,* the merolxTS of 'Z7ZX arXwise for superstition and too deUb- erate for fanat'"^'. , ^^^ „„ ^v wav to Guamas jrf'oit rSS o\rat^s Angeles expressly nv I'Aiii .\x;j iiiAri,. 1.19 tonillcn Cliiii-lfs F. I.iiimiiis, tlu' cditiir of "(int U -,' lui.i iliu I'utliiir of 111,. •■Spanisli I'ioticcrs." Willi tim I'o Millie .■xcrptlo!! uf liuiloir,. ItHiidfliiT, Mr. l.mimilH Is !lic licst informed iiikI nio>t rcliiiblo liviiiK iiiilliority on till' Iriho.s n of the ^eat order it was because I have alreadv b.-en antic, pated by many pens abler than mine. BancroTt C F Lumm,s, Stoddard, Helen Hunt Jackson Bryan CTneh and even poor Bret Hnrto ,v e ^ ^'•>'"' >^lineh forgetting those' saintly men, the Je uT^ho ''™-^' trail that afterward carried them to the martyr's grave 14:! BY PATH AND TBAIL. "i iti^ i in the lonelv desert. The world, and America in pavticu- lar will never repay or be able to repay its debt to the sons of St. Francis. Indeed, I doubt if Columbus could have sailed out of the harbor of Palos on his providen- tii'l uiis.sion of discovery had he not enlisted the co-oper- ation and influence of Brands of Calabria, confessor to Isabella, the ([uecn of Spain, and a member of the Fran- ciscan order. , j . ii. It was this Spanish Franciscan who appealed to the queen to outfit the great Genoese for his daring ex- periment. Then the first and most influential pro- tector in Spain of the great Admiral was that noble and generous Franciscan, Perez de Marchena. Return- ing from his first wondrous voyage of discovery, Colum- bus obtained from Pope Alexander VI. the privilege of selecting missionaries to accompany him on his second voyage to America. He chose several Franciscans, in- cluding Father Perez, the astronomer, and, arriving at Hispaniola, now the Island of Haiti, laid, in conjunc- tion with the Franciscans, the first ston<' of the city of San Domingo. Here, too, came, in 1505, the Franciscan Father Eemi, the King of Scotland's brother, accompa- nied by members of his order, who established for the conversion of the Indians of Hispaniola and those of the Antilles the monastery and headciuarters of the Holy Cross. It was a Franciscan priest, Jean Bernard Cas- tor! de Todi, the astronomer, who offered up the first mass on the virgin soil of America. It was also a Fran- ciscan priest, Jean Berganon, who first addressed the Indians in their own language, and the first missionary to die and be buried in America wa.-, a member of the order. Father AUesandro. Diega de Landa, missionary to the Qmcbes of la- Dv I'Axii a;cd ti;ail. 143 basco, and then Bishop of Yucatan in 1573, wrote the History of lucatan, mastered the mysterious Quiche lan- guage and deciphered the hieratic Maya alphabet, was a Franciscan. He left us the key to some of the stranRe inscriptions on the monuments of Central America He deciphered the weird cliaracters on the monuments of Mayapan and Chichin-Itza , but for him, his intelligence and tireless industry, these gravings would perhaps re- main a mystery for all time, like the Egyptian hiero- glyphics before the discovery of the Kosetta stone and the magnificent research and ingenuity of Champollion. Father Pierre Cousin, a French Franciscan, was the first priest martyred for Christ in America, and the first bishop consecrated for America, 1511, was Gareias de Predilla, a Franciscan, who built his cathedral in San Domingo But I am straying far afield and I call back my wandering pen to California and the southwest of our own country. By some mysterious centripetal force almost all the writings on the Franciscans of California converged to- ward one personality-Father Jnnipero Serra, a saintly college of San Fernando, Mexico City, is an oil painting of the gentle priest executed one hundred and sixty years ago. It is a face full of human pathos, of tender- ness, of spirituaUty: this painting and an enlarged da- guerreotype in the old Franciscan College of Sania Bar- bara, Cal., are all that remain to bring back the form and features of one who will for all time fill a conspicuous place in Cahforma history. Now, good and saintlv as was Father Jnnipero, and great and manv as are the praises smig of him, he was not superior, indeed, iadged by the standard of the world, he was not the cinal of 144 BY PATH AND TRAIL. other Franciscan missionaries of the southwest, whose names one seldom ever hears. If the crucifixion of the flesh, with its appetites, desires and demands; if great Builering voluntarily assumed and patiently boiiie; if fatigue, hunger, thirst and exposure endured uncom- plainingly for God and a great cause, and if surrender- ing freely life itself, for the uplifting of the outcast and the accursed, be the marks of heroic sanctity and heroi«: men, then there wore greater saints and greater men on the desert missions than Junipero Serra. Alone, away from the eye and the applause of civilized man, these lonely priests in desert and on mountain trod the wine press of the fury of insult, mockery and derision. For weary years of laborious and unceasing sacrifice, amid perils as fearful as ever tried the heart of man, they walked the furrow to the martyr's stake, nor cast one halting, lingering look behind. Their zeal, their courage, their fidelity to duty in the presence of eminent warn- ings ; their fortitude under hunger, weariness and exces- sive fatigue; their angelic piety and puritv of life, and their prodigious courage when confronted ^.ith torture and death, have built on the lonely desert a monument to St. Francis and to heroic Catholic charity, a monu- ment which will enduro till time shall be no more. Of these men were Fathers Garees, clubbed to death by the Yumas ; Martin de Arbide, burned alive by the Zunis ; Juan Diaz, tortured by the Mojaves, and thirty others, martyred for the faith. The history of the conversion and civilization of the Indians of the California coast, Arizona and New Mexico by the Franciscan fathers, forms one of the most brilliant chapters in the martyr- ology and confessorium of the imperishable Church of God. By their patience, tact and kindness, by the un- BY PATH AND TRAIL. 145 In tf '^Z ''""' °^ "''''■ ^''"'' ^^''' ■"«■> Ol God iTft J^h n ""'^ '"^'"^"'"' °^ """' ■^^^•"s* flock.. Mted them un o firm earth, Christianized and civilised them^ From Cape San Lucas to San Uiego, and on to «nH M .T"? ^""i^"' "^"S"'"^' ^" 0^" Arizona, Texas and tZ^T": '^«>''«""'"«''«'' uussions,built churches and taught the tribes to cultivate the land. Thev gath- taught them horticulture and irrigation, and furnished them seed and implements of agriculture. Thev intro- duced- sheep and cattle, planted vineyards, oliVe and orange groves, and made of these human wrecks a peace- Th;v"lf .Tr ^""^ '""'*''"''• P^°P'«- They did more. They taught these men and women of unknown race and origin how to break and shoe horses, to carve in wood, mould clay, make and lay tiles, to tan hides and make shoes, to smg and play on musical instruments, to make ^™ .rf'!.' "'°^u' P'""*"^^ '""J ^''' '^^y taught them the trades of the cooper, the weaver, the saddfer the blacksmith, the painter, the carpenter, the baker, he miller, the rope maker, the stone cutter, the mason and r Ll^ t"'"''"*'' occupations. Some of the finer arts taught the Indians by the fathers are practiced to-day br the members of the tribes, such, for example, as embroi! dery in gold and silver thread, fancy basket making, moulding «„d ,i.„g p^jj^^^ i^^^j^^^ ^ J, and drawn work, from the sale of which to curio dealers and visitors the Indians draw considerable revenue men, in 1834, a band of Catholic renegades, calling themselves the Republic of Mexico, broke up the mis sions, seized upon the possessions and revenues of the monasteries and Christian pueblos, the Indians were re- 146 BT PATH AND TBAIL. duced to beggary and became human derelicts, ontcasts and thieves. Fray Junipero Serra, founder of the early missions of Southern California, was a Franciscan priest, whose un- blemished life, angelic piety and habitual tenderness form a splendid pedestal for the statue of admiration erected to his memory by an appreciative public. It was on the morning of July 16, 1769, that Admiral Galvez, an up- right man and a brave fighter, together with Father Junipero Serra and another Franciscan priest, sailed into the bay, landed, and founded what is now known as "the old town," a few miles away from the present beautiful city of San Diego. They brought with them soldiers and laborers, 200 head of cattle, a full supply of seeds; seeds of grain, fruit, vegetables and flowers, young vines and bulbs, with an abundance of tools and implements. Thus by the priests of the Catholic church were intro- duced into California the horticultural, pastoral and agricultural industries, the civilization of the coast tribes begun, and the first mission opened. The founding of a mission and town in those days of faith was an affair of very great importance. When the men, stock and sup- plies were landed, and the commander of the expedition unfurled the standard of Spain, all heads were bared and a salute fired. Then the captain strode to the side of the floating flag, raised on high three times, in honor of the Holy Trinity, a large cross carrying the Image of the Redeemer. At once the commander, soldiers and men went, with uncovered heads, to their knees, bowed in worship, and, rising, chanted the "Te Deum," a hymn of praise to God and in His Name, and in the name of BV PATH AND TBAIL. 147 the king of Spain, took peaceable possession of the coun- try. Having chosen a site best adapted for their infant city, the priests superintended the erection of an altar under the shade of a friendly tree, Father Junipero, robed in the vestments he had brought with him from his monasterj- of San Fernando, Mexico Citv, eelehralod the first mass oflfered up in California, Julv 17, 17G9 and before intoning the "Credo," feelinglv addressed his companio;is. Far away on the hilltops the naked sav- ages, amazed at the sight of the ship and astounded by the report of the guns, gazed witli awe and wonder on the white-robed priest, the plumed commander, the uni- formed soldiers, the horses and strangclv horned cows and sheep. After mass the Spaniards formed in proces- sion and moved towards the bay, whose waters the priest solemnly blessed, and in honor of St. James of Alcala confirmed the name "Puerto (Bay) de San Diego de Al- cala ' bestowed upon the harbor by Vizcaino, November 12, 1603. The following day they began the erection of a fort and church, .selecting an old Indian rnncheria, called Cosoy, as best suited for the site of a Christian pueblo Tlw rums of the church and fort are here to-day; two stately palms, planted by the fathers, still wave and nod with every cooling breeze, and the dear old bell, that every morning called the Indians to pravers, hangs in Its rude belfry, outside the church, reminding the monev- makmg and aggressive American that in those davs men worshiped God and believed in a hereafter In Vu- gust, 1774, they changed their quarters and removed the mission and settlement six miles up the vallev to a place called by the Indians Nipaguav. Here the"v built a 148 BY PATH AND TRAIL. wooden church thatched with tule rushes, a blacksmith ghop, storehouses and outbuildings for the men. On the night of November 5, 1775, the mission was attacked by the savages. No intimation, no warning or provocation was given. They swooped down upon the unsuspecting Spaniards, slaughtered Father Jaume and four others and burned the buildings, including the church. Father Fustre, who fortunately escaped the massacre, wrote an interesting account of the murder of the priest and the destruction of the mission. The fol- lowing year the mission was restored, and, in 1834, when the fathers were driven out by Mexican bandits, calling themselves the Bepublic of Mexico, the Indians wera all Christians and civilized. His old mission of "Our Lady of Sorrows," at San Diego, was destroyed during the Mexican war, but some crumbling walls yet remain, eloquent memorials of the romantic past. The few acres of land and the buildings on them, which were confiscated and sold to a Mexican politician, were recovered for the church in 1856. Beside the dear old church there is now an industrial school, where the Indian children, from the reservations of Southern California, are trained and taught by the Sis- ters of St. Joseph. To thi. iiUle farm belongs the dis- tinction of protecting the first olive trees planted on the continent of North America. Three miles above the school, the old dam built by the fathers and their Indian converts 1?5 years ago, is still in existence. From this dam, through a deep and ugly ravine, they carried an aqueduct of tiles imbedded in mortar and rubble to irri- gate their gardens. The gnarled old orchard, still bear- ing its fruit, is as luscious as in the days when the "old mission" brands of pickled olives and olive oil were fa- BY PATH AND TRAIL. 149 mous the world over. Indeed, they are famous yet No feiuuiiK ptuestiils, two statues— one nf v;, ly companions tai t »Z *°^ '"' P"^^*- imgate^h:Tand rai;egrarfTurLJ° '=""'!?*« ""'^ make their labo; profitf^' "I do not7 '''' "'"' Mr. W. E Curtis in th„ pi • ^ ' '"""'• ^"^s missionary on ty^H^f" ^^HrS^f r'"' '^""^ testant-who accomplished more l^d for h' % n™" creaturcs. The heroism of P„? t • •"' ^*"°^ usefulness, his selfTcrifi ht piir'Tv""' '^^ order, introduced horses, cattle and Ep^ itJl IW) DY P4TII *NI) TRAIL. orange and olive groves and .nud. nf their «-Hhy Jo"- verts a l-oncoful and industrious people Ucft alone aud in undisturhed pursuit of their upostol.c work the f,l rs would in tinu. have eonverte.l and ^"v '^^d aU e tribes of the I'aeitic coast and the Southwest, t om he day they opened the Hrst uussiou to j'-; mj--; -' the conllscation of their property, m !«■!+;"'« f"'"^* et w opposition and diseourageu.ent. They suceeed- ed „ eon„u 'ring the hostility of the savages, erad^at ng their foul superstitions aud winn.ng tliem o a Ihr.stmn and a lean ^fe, but their virtues, self-denial and hero.c ZrUv failed to subdue the eupidity and avarice of the founders of an illegitimate republic. From his death bed in his little """"f 7, .'" , ^'T terev, the saintly priest .lunil-ero .Serra asked h s bret - ren to beg from Ood for more help in the desolate wil- derness On the night of August -JB, ]-84, he was dying a"d h B last words were: "Pray ye, therefore the T.ord o?the harvest that He send laborers into His vineyard.' BOOK III. IN THE UND OF THE PAPAGOES i I I CHAl'Ti';!; \-'-[iT A LAWD .1, MChNR VDM.tlw. here last night fill,, i . ■^'"""^'''-•"X l'""i, I arrived for the wonderful wo ;,('':H'''''''r''' """ '"'""'•''"™ strange configJl^lr. i !:at:-:'t J "l" wrought by the hand of tim,.. O.n e m ' ' i„ T^^'t r.'r s.= "'■"": "-""^-.nt- 154 BY PATH AND HHU.. i4 vomit compared to which th" Matatutu discharge is but an intestinal disturbance. The San Francisco mountain, 13,000 feet high, on the northwestern edge of Arizona, is one of the most beauti- ful mountains in America. At seme period, geologically recent, it was the focus of an igneus commotion of un- eqnaled duration and violence. It poured out rivers and lakes of lava, which covered the land for two hundred square miles and raised it in places 500 feet. This state- ment may stagger belief, but any one who leaves the Santa Fe at Ash Fork and follows the trail to the Hupais village of Ave Supais, and begins the descent of Cataract Canyon, may verify for himself the enormous depth of this unprecedented flow. Eetuming to Ash Fork, when the sun is declining and the sky flecked with clouds, the nir man will see a sunset impossible of description, paralyzing the genius of a Paul Loraine and the brush of a Turner. Then the heavens are bathed in a lurid blood color, in purple and saffron, or gleam with vivid sheen of molten, burnished gold, when a falling cataract of fiery vermilion rests upon the purple peaks and ridges of the western moun- tains. I know not any land where ihe full majesty of the text of the inspired writer is more luminously pres- ent than here in this region of wonders. "The heavens declareth the glorj of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." East of the Missouri river this is an unknown land, even to the well-informed American. Wealthy and pre- sumedly educated citizens of the East spend millions annually sightseeing in Europe and Egypt, when here, within their borders, is a land where mysterious and pre-historic races dwell, where nature and nature's God nv I'ATII AXn TRAIL. l.W Imvo v,-r«„aht .n.redil.le marvH.s „„liko :„,vtlm,s- seen elscwlK.n- „p„„ the earth, an,l of whiel. the people seem to have „„ appreeiation. The liills and h.kes of Switz- erland the Alps and Appenines, to whieh thousand.. . ar alter year, go from An>eri,.a ostensibly to admire u ,onhg„rat,ons and towering, heights of these histor- ca > famons mountains, ean olier nothing to the eve or dersof'tT"''""""", '",''' '•""'pared to the naturalwon- «ne:;,:eior """ '""" ""' -'■ "•"'^" "^«^ "^^-^ '» ^^ Nowhere may there he found such extensive areas of and deserts, crossed and recrossed in every directLn by lofty mountams of strange formation, as in this eom paratively unknown region. Here are fath„„,less can- IZ ofllTr 'f t"'-P""'"« P"""^^ '"«' « vast ThZ "" * /"""■"''""""^ P"^^'*-'^ i" topography. There are broad stretches of desert, where the winds nuse storn,s of dust and whirl cyclones of sand.tr'S death to man and beast. Here are to be found disn.al ra- vines, horrent abysses and startling oanvons, in whose gloomy depths flow streams of water pure and clear as ever nppled through the pages of Cervantes. Her" are «.e cells of the ditr-dwellers, the burrows of the trog Iod> tes, or pre-h.storic cave-men, the ruins of the ancient Ime I^h"' ""' *?™^ "' P-Colnn-bian tribes who l..ne gone down am,d the fierce eonfliets of tribal wars an.l have disappeared from off the earth Darwm, Huxley and Maupas are welcome to their hcor,es accounting for the origin of Man an.I his expT s.on from the brute to a civilized being, but mv Mfe ml'Zt't'l c' t- T""" ""'"' --«- ""ve oonvin!2 me tlMt the territory separating the civilized from the savage man could never be crossed by the savagT u„ 156 BY PATH ASD TRAIL. n assisted by a civilized guide, while all history proves that races at one time in possession of civilization have passed over that territory and descended into the gloomy depths of savagery, where many of them yet remain. In Arizona, at least, it was impossible for the Indian to lift himself out of his degradation, for when he began his rude cultivation of the land, the ferocious mountain tribes swooped down upon him and drove him into the desert or to the inaccessible cliffs. Following the instinct of self-preservation, he built his stone hut on lofty ledges or scooped from the friable mountain side, fifty, one hundred, two hundred feet in air, a cave which served for an observatory and a refuge for his wife and children. With a rope ladder, twisted from the viscera of the grey wolf, or the hide of the mountain lion, he climbed down from his lofty perch, re- turning with food and water for his miserable family. Thus began the now famous "clift-dwellings," which seventy years ago many of our learned antiquarians thought were the dens of an extinct species, half animal and half man. Seeing and knowing nothing of the rope which was always lifted by the woman when the man was at home or on the hunt, the deduction was quite natural that no human being could scale the face of the almost perpendicular cliff. The Moqui Indians still inhabit these strange rock lairs on the northern side of the Colorado Chiquito. There is no tribe of aborigines left upon the earth, there's no region of the world, more deserving of examination than the Moquis and the mysterious land they occupy. Here at the village of Huaipi, on a mesa or table land surr(