120 Recreations of a Sportsman 



natural and impossible. Powder this tree as 

 closely as you can with bunches of flowers of 

 the most vivid golden-yellow, and you have the 

 palo verde forests, which are here, there, and 

 everywhere about the giant cactus forest of 

 the delta, while occasionally another species joins 

 forces, and lends still another green to the land- 

 scape. There are minor streams, arroyos, in the 

 delta, and when these are approached the forest 

 becomes mesquite, large and attractive trees 

 which line the banks of the Rio Yaqui, the Mayo, 

 and others, growing in sandy loam that ages ago 

 was cultivated as the gardens of the Yaquis. 



Motoring even in this region is not without 

 its excitement. In attempting to take a balsa 

 irrigation bank we are stranded on its broad 

 summit like a horse on a hurdle, a proceeding 

 which demonstrates that our Yaqui runner is 

 of service as a Yaqui digger. An hour of dig- 

 ging and jacking, and we slide off the sandways 

 and run down into Muchobampo, a little village 

 no one ever heard of before, or is likely to again, 

 yet a place to fascinate the artist. Muchobampo 

 means in some way the place of the well, though 

 bampo is a popular suffix in this country whether 

 there is a well or not, but Muchobampo has a 

 well, one street lined with picturesque, indeed 

 artistic, adobes, with patios in the rear, over the 

 walls of which, black heads and darker eyes 

 gleam in fear, surprise, and wonder, and above 



