A BUFFALO HUNT IN NORTHERN MEXICO. 



By GEN. LEW. WALLACE, 



AUTHOR OF "THE FAIR GOD,'' "BEN HUR," ETC. 



Part I. Going to the Hunt. 



ONE traveling to the far city of Chihuahua by way of Monterey 

 and Saltillo must cross what the Mexicans call El Desierto, 

 which is not to be understood as a region of shifting sand and 

 mud-gray mountains, like the deserts of the Bedawee. It is only a 

 rainless belt — rainless in the summer and fall and part of the winter. 

 More fertile land, speaking of the land itself, is not on the globe. 

 The results of irrigation by the sufficient water-courses are incredible 

 to strangers, while the plateaus and long swales between mountains, 

 and frequently the mountains clear to their crests, are covered with 

 rank grasses which, grown in the brief season of rain, are peculiar in 

 that they cure themselves in the standing stalk. Such are the pas- 

 turas of Durango and Chihuahua, vast enough and rich enough to 

 feed and fatten all the herds of whatever kind owned by men. 



The resting-places on the way to the desert are Parras, celebrated 

 for its sweet red wines and the wonderful beauty of its site and sur- 

 roundings ; Alamos, most rural of Mexican towns, dominating the 

 great Laguna district, once so coveted by the dead president of the 

 Latter Day Saints ; and Mapimi, whence, off the road right or left, 

 lo, the dreaded wilderness ! 



The towns named are two and three days apart, with certain 

 ranchos between them, but for which the wayfarer would be com- 

 pelled to bivouac where the night found him, on the open plain or 

 7A 



