nformation to be gotten about it. What
the Mexicans know about that region may be briefly summed up thus:
That it is a vast wilderness of mountains most difficult of approach;
that it would take eight days to climb some of the high ridges;
that it contains immense pine forests alive with deer, bear, and
wonderfully large woodpeckers, able to cut down whole trees; and that
in its midst there are still existing numerous remains of a people
who vanished long ago, but who once tilled the soil, lived in towns
and built monuments, and even bridges over some of its canons.

This general ignorance is mainly due to the fact that until very
recently this entire part of the sierra, from the border of the
United States south about 250 miles, was under the undisputed control
of the wild Apache Indians. From their mountain strongholds these
marauders made raiding expeditions into the adjacent states, west
and east, sweeping down upon the farms, plundering the villages,
driving off horses and herds of cattle, killing men and carrying off
women and children into slavery. Mines became unworkable; farms had
to be deserted; the churches, built by the Spaniards, mouldered into
decay. The raiders had made themselves absolute masters, and so bold
were they that at one time a certain month in the year was set apart
for their plundering excursions and called "the moon of the Mexicans,"
a fact which did not prevent them from robbing at other seasons. Often
troops would follow them far into the mountains, but the "braves"
fought so skilfully, and hid so well in the natural fortresses of
their native domain, that the pursuit never came to anything, and
the Mexicans were completely paralysed with fear. The dread of the
terrible pillagers was so great that even at the time when I first
went into the district, the Mexicans did not consider it a crime to
shoot an Apache at sight.

Such a scourge did this tribe become that the Governor of Chihuahua
had a law passed through the Legislature, which put a certain price
upon the head of every Apache. But this law had soon to be repealed,
as the Mexicans, eager to get the reward, took to killing the peaceful
Tarahumares, whose scalps, of course, could not be distinguished from
those of the Apaches.

It was not even now safe for a small party to cross the Sierra Madre,
as dissatisfied Apaches were constantly breaking away from the San
Carlos Reservation in Arizona, and no Mexican could have been induced