even forming many of those existing today — an exercise in 

 which, in the Old World, the otherwise worthy goat, with his 

 predilection for eating every scrap of vegetation, has been man's 

 staunches! ally. 



We noted at the beginning of this chapter that the Western 

 Sierras mirror the Eastern except for the little wedge of territory 

 down at the southeast corner of the latter, where a montane zone 

 of the evergreen tropical forest pushes north out of Central 

 America. A glance at the map will explain this statement. First, 

 the Southern Scrub swings far south into the plateau "lining" the 

 west face of the East Sierras, then curving west and north to 

 "line" the east face of the West Sierras, where it squeezes through 

 Arizona to the west chaparrals of Sonora. Behind and above 

 these scrublands, the upland oak forest forms a wide belt that 

 almost rings the plateau and reaches up into Sonora. 



see canyons that put those of the Colorado to shame, or visit 

 villages of original Americans who still spurn so much as a 

 store-bought blanket. 



Here is a land where great jaguars pad around your camp at 

 night, armies of coatis forage through villages, unclassified birds 

 scream at you from orchid-festooned trees in gorges filled with 

 the mists of giant waterfalls, and — in the grass-carpeted uplands 

 under the spreading oaks — family parties of wolves step over 

 your sleeping bag to rake over the dead embers of your fire in 

 search of charred bones. 



Of course I cannot describe this vast land adequately, for it is 

 still mostly unexplored, and 1 have personally only entered it at 

 three points, while there appears to be nothing recorded about it 

 at other points. On one journey to it, I was guided by a tyran- 

 nical-looking gentleman — I use the term deliberately — of the 



Coatimundis are a form of Raccoon and go trekking about 

 and foraging in large companies. They are found as far 

 north as mountainous districts in Oklahoma. 



A large Southern Soft-shelled Turtle, a strange aquatic 

 creature that is found in the rivers of the eastern Sierras 

 of Mexico. 



The Sierra Madre Occidental is a vast, virtually unknown land 

 of immense subparallel mountain ranges that march, one after 

 the other, from the Pacific to the central plateau. They stretch 

 from the United States border to the valley of the Rio Grande de 

 Santiago. In area this province exceeds that of Texas, yet there 

 is still today but one road up its western edge along the Pacific 

 coast and one up its eastern fringe along the western edge of the 

 plateau, passing from Leon via Aguascalientes, Durango, and 

 Chihuahua to El Paso. Only one route crosses this vast mass — 

 the one from Durango to Mazatlan — and this is little traveled. 

 The very size of this country is not realized by foreigners, and 

 even most Mexicans stare at you blankly if you say there is a 

 virtually unexplored valley over four hundred miles long in this 

 part of their country. What is more, none of the millions of 

 travelers who for half a century have passed up and down the 

 Pacific coast by rail or by car knows that within sometimes no 

 more than ten miles inland you may lie under a vast forest tree 

 with two hundred bright green military macaws perched in it. 



Yaqui people, whom I happened to meet among the foothills 

 while collecting small animals among the dried scrub bordering a 

 wide waterless river bed. He spoke some Spanish and happened 

 to have a spare horse, and after an outdoor meal he invited me to 

 travel with him and visit his village. As my total equipment was 

 contained in two small bags, I climbed aboard the horse and we 

 headed into the mountains. At sundown we reached a small hut 

 at the foot of the towering Sierras and bedded down for the 

 night. Then for three days we rode upward, downward, and up- 

 ward again, first through tangled scrub, then up a narrow gorge 

 choked with tropicale and positively screaming with parrots, into 

 a vast oak forest where the trees grew in ranks one above the 

 other — their spreading heads just meeting — beneath which grew 

 knee-high, rich, green grass. It was there that the wolves tidied 

 up our fire. On the fourth day we reached a village at the very 

 bottom of an immense valley with towering cliffs in front and 

 behind and mountain shoulders alternating like a child's drawing 

 as far as the eye could see to left and right. 



288 



