ctacle. An excited imagination may see in them so
many giants suddenly petrified while walking up the mountain. Around
Pinos Altos and Jesus Maria the rock is of blue porphyry, quite hard
in places, and speckled with little white patches. It is in this rock
that the gold- and silver-bearing quartz occurs.

Through the courtesy of the bullion-convoy I was enabled to dispatch
some of my collections via Chihuahua to the museum at New York,
among other things eight fine specimens of the giant woodpecker.

Then, sending my train ahead, I made with a guide a little detour to
visit the beautiful waterfall near Jesus Maria. It is formed by the
River Basasiachic, which, except during the wet season, is small and
insignificant. Before the fall the stream for more than a hundred
yards runs in a narrow but deep channel, which in the course of
ages it has worn into the hard conglomerate rock. The channel itself
is full of erosions and hollowed-out places formed by the constant
grinding and milling action of the rapidly rushing water, and the
many large pebbles it carries. Just at the very brink of the rock,
a low natural arch has been eroded, and over this the stream leaps
almost perpendicularly into the deep straight-walled canon below. The
height of the cascade has been measured by a mining expert at Pinos
Altos, and found to be 980 feet. Set in the most picturesque, noble
environments, the fall is certainly worth a visit.

I arrived at its head just as the last rays of the setting sun
were gilding the tops of the mountains all around. The scenery was
beautiful beyond description. Above and around towered silent, solemn
old pine-trees, while: the chasm deep down was suffused with a purple
glow. About midway down the water turns into spray and reaches the
bottom as silently as an evening shower, but as it recovers itself
forms numerous whirlpools and rapids, rushing through the narrow gorge
with an incessant roar. When the river is full, during the wet season,
the cascade must present a splendid sight.

I wanted to see the fall from below. The guide, an elderly man,
reminded me that the sun was setting, and warned me that the distance
was greater than it seemed. We should stumble and fall, he said,
in the dark. But as I insisted on going, he put me on the track, and
I started on a rapid run, jumping from stone to stone, zigzagging my
way down the mountainside. The entire scenery, the wild, precipitous
rocks, the stony, crooked