52 



Narrative of the Trip. 



Our guide on the journey to the Pattie Basin was Captain 

 Edward W. Funcke, of San Ysidro, CaHfornia, a man who has 

 conducted scores of hunters into the mountains and hollow 

 plains of northwestern Lower California, and has even made 

 the long land pilgrimage to the southern end of the great 

 peninsula. During his scouring of the country, he has learned 

 the watering places of the native Indians, besides discovering 

 several new ones for himself, and he possesses perhaps a more 

 practical knowledge of the Mexican half of the Colorado 

 Desert than any other American. 



As manager of the pack train, the ''captain" employed 

 a taciturn Mexican called Pancho, a ranchman who under- 

 stood the mentality of mules and burros to a degree that sug- 

 gested close kinship. He was also reputed to be a great 

 hunter, but, as subsequent events proved, his old-time Win- 

 chester must have had a crooked barrel or else he was the 

 very worst shot in all Baja California. A third member of 

 the captain's party was the camp cook, who answered to the 

 name of Mac. 



Colonel Esteban Cantu, Military Commandant (now Gov- 

 ernor) of northern Baja California, courteously granted the 

 necessary permission for our expedition, and on March 29, 

 1915, the morning after Mr. Rockwell and I had reached 

 Calexico, all was ready for us to start into the desert. Our 

 cavalcade comprised four horses, a mule, a hinny, and five 

 burros, not counting one burro colt which carried no pack 

 and which came only because its mother wouldn't go without 

 it. The horses hardly measured up to the popular idea of fiery 

 western steeds. On the contrary, they were rather prosaic, 

 ambulatory beasts, whose virtue lay in their ability to keep 

 burros on the move, and to find their own living in a land of 

 sparse vegetation by browsing all night after they had travelled 

 all day. Only the mount assigned to Mac had a properly 

 picturesque appearance, for, although a weak-kneed brute, 

 this rangy, pale-eyed, yellow and white, pinto horse had the 

 look of a high-grade polo pony. Pancho rode a stalwart 

 hinny, his own favorite, which together with the mule made 



