four miles south of
our camp, there were immense quantities of fish, which had come up to
spawn. No one ever interfered with them, and their number was simply
overwhelming. As the task of feeding thirty men in these wild regions
was by no means a trifling one, I resolved to procure as many fish as
possible, and to this end resorted to the cruel but effective device
of killing them by dynamite. I trust that the scarcity of provisions
in the camp will serve as my excuse to sportsmen for the method I
employed. We used a stick of dynamite six inches long, and it raised a
column of water twenty feet in the air, while the detonation sounded
like a salute, rolling from peak to peak for miles around. In two
hours three of us gathered 195 fish from a single pool. Most of them
were big suckers; but we had also thirty-five large Gila trout. All
were fat and of delicate flavour, and lasted us quite a long time.

Never have I been at any place where deer were so plentiful. Almost
at every turn one of them might be seen, sometimes standing as if
studying your method of approach. I sent out five men to go shooting
in the northwesterly direction from the camp, and after a day and a
half they returned with ten deer. At one time we had fifteen hanging
in the kitchen.

One morning our best marksman, a Mexican named Figueroa, brought
in three specimens of that superb bird, _campephilus imperialis_,
the largest woodpecker in the world. This splendid member of the
feathered tribe is two feet long; its plumage is white and black, and
the male is ornamented with a gorgeous scarlet crest, which seemed
especially brilliant against the winter snow. The birds go in pairs
and are not very shy, but are difficult to kill and have to be shot
with rifle. One of their peculiarities is that they feed on one tree
for as long as a fortnight at a time, at last causing the decayed tree
to fall. The birds are exceedingly rare in the museums. They are only
found in the Sierra Madre. On my journeys I saw them as far south
as the southernmost point which the Sierra Madre del Norte reaches
in the State of Jalisco, above the Rio de Santiago. I frequently
observed them also in the eastern part of the range.

Here, too, a great many specimens of the rare Mexican titmouse and
some beautiful varieties of the duck tribe were procured.

A few days after our arrival at the Rancheria de los Apaches, Professor
Libbey left our camp, returning to the United States by wa