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more held young babies in their arms. Some of the children 

 had silver medals of the Virgin strung from their necks. 



I watched one woman maldng griddle-cakes of a kind of 

 fine meal. First she rolled and patted the unleavened dough 

 into balls, then pinched and slapped these into very thin disks, 

 which she cooked on a dry iron plate, turning them over a 

 dozen times, and folding them twice at the end. All of the 

 Indians were either too busy or too dignified to pay the 

 slightest attention to Pancho and me, except to say "Buenos 

 dias.'^ The little girl, whose picture I had taken on the trip 

 down, began to cry about something, and old Laguna at once 

 left his orang-utan position under the rafters, and went to 

 comfort her. He seemed very grandfather! y. 



We bought a few potatoes, some sugar, and one large onion 

 from Laguna for the high price of fifty cents, and then went on, 

 passing several little cultivated patches belonging to the 

 Indians. We also met two or three middle-aged men out 

 hunting cottontails with bows and arrows. 



At the point of the Cocopahs, where we had met the 

 rurales on our southward trip, the rising river had flooded the 

 whole region, so that we had to force our animals to wade, 

 or else to clamber along the rough mountain-side. The whole 

 enswamped desert was merry with red-winged blackbirds, 

 coots, and killdeers. Many of the last pattered along just 

 a few feet ahead of us, uttering their plaintive calls. 



We lunched within sight of the Cerro Prieto, and had 

 scarcely renewed our journey when a strange, wild sound of 

 high-pitched singing came down the trail from the northward. 

 A moment later a large burro, with an Indian boy and girl 

 on its back, trotted into sight. Behind them came another 

 burro with a young man seated far back on its haunches. 

 The three Indians were singing at the tops of their lungs in 

 weird, falsetto voices, and they were dressed as if for a celebra- 

 tion, with red and green cotton cloths bound round their hair, 

 and two red stripes, bordered with narrow lines of yellow, painted 

 across their faces from ear to ear. They barely interrupted 

 their singing to exchange a huenos dias as they trotted past, 

 and for a long time the wind brought us snatches of their 

 expressive music. 



