ck on my back, the
heavy tripod under my arm; his aneroid, surveying instruments, and
satchel of the almost microscopic notes which he kept fully and
precisely every night by the camp-fire (even when I had to crouch over
him and the precious paper with my water-proof focusing cloth) somehow
bestowed about him. Up and down pathless cliffs, through tangled canons,
fording icy streams and ankle-deep sands, we travailed; no blankets,
overcoats, or other shelter; and the only commissary a few cakes of
sweet chocolate, and a small sack of parched popcorn meal. Our "lodging
was the cold ground." When we could find a cave, a tree, or anything to
temper the wind or keep off part of the rain, all right. If not, the
Open. So I came to love him as well as revere. I had known many
"scientists" and what happened when they really got Outdoors. He was in
no way an athlete--nor even muscular. I was both--and not very long
before had completed my thirty-five-hundred-mile "Tramp Across the
Continent." But I never had to "slow down" for him. Sometimes it was
necessary to use laughing force to detain him at dark where we had water
and a leaning cliff, instead of stumbling on through the trackless night
to an unknown "Somewheres." He has always reminded me of John Muir, the
only other man I have known intimately who was as insatiate a climber
and inspiring a talker. But Bandelier had one advantage. He could find
common ground with _anyone_. I have seen him with Presidents, diplomats,
Irish section-hands, Mexican peons, Indians, authors, scientists and
"society." Within an hour or so he was easily the Center. Not
unconscious of his power, he had an extraordinary and sensitive modesty,
which handicapped him through life among those who had the "gift of
push." He never put himself forward either in person or in his writing.
But something about him fascinated all these far-apart classes of
people, when he spoke. His command of English, French, Spanish, and
German might have been expected; but his facility in acquiring the
"dialects" of railroad men and cowboys, or the language of an Indian
tribe, was almost uncanny. When he first visited me, in Isleta, he knew
just three words of Tigua. In ten days he could make himself understood
by the hour with the Principales in their own unwritten tongue. Of
course, this was one secret of his extraordinary success in learning the
inner heart of the Indians.

I saw it proved again in our contact with the Qui