April i, 1905. J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
281 
El Morro. 
Inscription Rock. 
FajR away in the Southwest, not very far from the 
Pueblo of Ziini, rises from the ground a quadrangular 
mass of white sandstone a mile long, more than 200 feet 
in height, "and strikingly peculiar on account of its 
massive character and the Egyptian style of its natural 
buttresses and domes." Long, long ago, before the Dutch 
had made their first permanent settlement on the Island 
of Manhattan, before the Pilgrims had landed in Massa- 
chusetts or the French had estabhshed Quebec; even be 
fore the English had settled in Virginia, a European 
traveler had inscribed on this rock his name, and even 
some notes of his business in the country. He was soon 
followed by others, and some of the ancient records may 
be read there to-day. They are in many cases beautifully 
engraved, and are chiefly in Spanish, with not a few In- 
dian hieroglyphics, often undecipherable. This is Inscrip- 
tion Rock, called by the Spanish explorers El Morro— the 
castle— and on its summit are the remains of two very 
ancient Pueblo towns. 
It is hard to realize that two hundred and fifty years 
before the opening of those "Trails of the Pathfinders," 
concerning which we have been reading the story, 
Europeans were journeying back and forth in the distant 
A little later he might be killed by the Indians, and his 
ashes borne away on the wind of heaven. 
Of all the writings found there by Lieutenant Simpson, 
only one — the initials O. R., March 19, 1836 — appears to 
have been written by a man acquainted with the English 
language, but since then many a passerby has carved his 
name, and in the process has defaced ancient records of 
value and interest. _ • 
The earliest date on Inscription Rock is 1606, written 
by Don Juan de Ohate, "that brave soldier and wise first 
Governor in the United States." The record, as given by 
Lummis in his graphic description of the rock, reads : 
''Passed by here the Lieutenant don Juan de Oiiate to the 
discovery of the sea of the south on the l6th of April, 
year 1605." But the date is 1606, not 1605. and Lummis 
gives the date of Onate's discovery of the Sea of the 
South as 1604; hence he could not have discovered it_ in 
1605 or 1606. A conjectural reading made by supplying 
the word hccho for the word al supplied by Lttmmis, 
would make the writing read, "The adelantado Don Juan 
de Onate passed here after making an exploring expedi- 
tion to the sea of the south, on the i6th of April, 1606," 
a reading which would accord better with the known 
facts. 
A long inscription which mentions the Governor Nieto 
is much obscured by the obliteration of almost the whole 
first line, and the last line also offers a difficulty by the 
use of the first person in the words pose and lleve. If 
Medicine in Camp. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I would like to occupy a little space in yotir valued 
journal for the purpose of replying to the article on 
"Medicine in Camp" by Dr. C'has. S. Moody which 
appeared in your issue of Feb. 4. 
It seems a pity that such articles are not of more 
frequent occurrence in the sporting papers, as the aver- 
age layman goes into the woods almost entirely un- 
prepared for any emergency greater than a cut finger 
or a bruised knee. There are three points in Dr. Moody's 
article on which I wish to comment: — first as to the 
use 01 morphine by the mouth rather than by the 
hypodermic syringe. There is, in my opinion, no more 
danger of a man becoming a "fiend" from the use Of 
morphine when it is necessary to use it than there 
is of his becoming a drunkard from the administration 
of a drink of whiskey when he is exhausted and cold. 
Starting then with the proposition that it is necessary 
to give the drug, I maintain that the proper method 
is by the hypodermic. First, because there is no re- 
sultant nausea; second, because the absorption of the 
drug into the circulation is so prompt that the desired 
effect is more quickly obtained; and third, the injec- 
tion being given in the neighborhood of the injury, the 
pain is relieved by less of the drug than would be re- 
quired if given by the mouth. 
RECORDS ON SOUTH FACE OF INSCRIPTION ROCK, SEPTEMBER I/, 1849. 
Southwest, exploring, laying out roads, and fighting with 
and subduing the natives. It was in 1540 that Coronado 
made his famous expedition to the fabled Seven Cities of 
Cibola, and penetrated far beyond that on to the plains, 
reaching at last the land of Quivira, which for many 
years has been puzzle, stumbling block and theater of 
wordy warfare to students of history. 
For uncounted generations before the coming of the 
Spaniards, people had been living in that far Southwest, 
and to-day the inhabited towns of their descendants and 
the ruins of those of their ancestors dot the plaui, or 
stand perched in the inaccessible niches of the tall 
cliffs. 
The Southwest is a land of wonders, much of it abso- 
lute desert, inhabited only by living things which lotig 
adaptation to their environment has fitted to survive in 
the terrible struggle for life in the waterless land. Of the 
extraordinary features of the country, none are more 
imposing than those which are the eft'ects of the erosive 
action of the air. Much of the rock is a soft sandstone, 
which the wind, carrying fine particles of sand and blowr 
ing it against the rock, has carved into a thousand fan- 
tastic shapes. There are tall buttes, natural walls sur- 
mounted by towers which look like old ruins and natural 
bridges of massive arch and wide span. Here and there 
trap dykes or lava overflows interrupt the more usual 
sandstone with curious shapes. Everywhere the dryness, 
the ruins and the fantastic rock carvings give to the scene 
an appearance of antiquity hardly to be met with anywhere 
else in the world. 
The first account of the writings on Inscription Rock 
was given by Lieut. J. H. Simpson, of the Corps of Topo- 
graphical Engineers, who in September, 1849, visited the 
pfece with Kem, an artist, and made fac-similes of the 
inscriptions. 
The names here written are those of early Spanish ex- 
plorers, men who under the orders of their king, or his 
representative, were striving to learn what they could 
about a country new and unknown. Here they were meet- 
ing perils of which they had no experience ; savage men. 
wild beasts, torrential floods or parching thirst were 
among the dangers to which they were exposed. They 
did not write their names on this sandstone for the glory 
of having it known that they had passed by ; rather they 
desired to leave here a record for those who should come 
after them, so that if they perished in obeying their 
orders, their fellows who might follow them to carry on 
the work should know how far their predecessors had 
safely come. And indeed, in more than one case, as Mr. 
Luminis has suggested, the record engraved on this rock 
by some simple soldier is the only monument that he had. 
wc suppose the inscription written by some missionary in 
the train of the Governor, the last line might read "Que 
solo ya a Zuni pase y la Fe lleve." That is, "I alone had 
previously been in Zufii on a missionary trip." The second 
word in this line is rendered solo because the writer, 
working hastily, might have left out the first "o" and then 
made a mark of erasure to denote the mistake, as appears. 
The first line might be, for instance, "Aqui pase yo P. F. 
Juan Feliz con el governador," and the rendering, "Here 
I, Father Juan Feliz, passed with the Governor Don Fran- 
cisco Manuel Silva Nieto, since his unquestioned 
strength and valor has overcome the impossible, with 
the wagons of the king our master, a result which he 
alone attained August 9, i629._ I alone had previously 
been in Zuhi on a missionary trip." 
Here is another inscription, more brief: 
"We passed by this place. Major and Captain Juan 
Arachutela, and the Lieutenant Diego Martin Barba and 
Second Lieutenant Juan Agostyn De Ynojos in the year 
1636." 
Another reads: ' 
"Here w£s General Don Diego de Vargas, who con- 
quered for our Holy Faith and for the royal crown, all 
New Mexico at his own cost, in the year 1692." 
An interesting question comes up incidentally; when 
was the town of Zuni known by that name? 
At Coronado's arrival, 1540, the Indian name was 
Ha-wi-kuh. Coronado, leaving the name Cibola for the 
whole district, christened the town itself Granada. 
Bancroft (note 19, page 86, of his "History of Arizona 
and New Mexico") in a document about Espejo's expedi- 
tion, 1582, mentions the name Zmii, which the writer of 
the document thought was the Indian name then. 
This great rock, El Morro, is the oldest monument 
engraved by white hands in North America, and one 
would imagine that its antiquity would have protected 
it from defacement. Nevertheless, within the last few 
years, some visitor to the rock has chopped away in 
cruel and wanton fashion a number of the inscriptions. 
Recentlj\ through the efforts of persons interested in 
archaeology, the Secretary of the Interior has handed 
over El Morro to the care of certain local officials, who. 
it is hoped, may jealously guard it. Protection for these 
records of the past is greatly needed in the Southwest, 
and as travel to that country increases, more and more 
people visit it who desire to make merchandise of these 
wonderful and beautiful things that can never be replaced 
if once destroyed. It is the duty of every thoughtful 
-person to do everything in his power to hold up the hands 
of the historians and the ethnologists who are now striv= 
ing to protect these wonders. H. G. DtrLOG. 
The hypodermic is an instrument so easily under- 
stood by a person of average intelligence, and so de- 
void of danger when properly used, that I always ad- 
vise inquirers to learn how to use one and add it to 
the kit. In addition to its usefulness in administering 
morphine, the syringe is invaluable in case it is neces- 
sary to use cocaine as a local anesthetic so as to 
make a small surgical operation painless, like cutting 
out a fish hook and the like. 
The Doctor's experience has been in a different 
climate from that in which I have camped for the past 
twenty years, but here we never take any remedies 
for a "cold" — such a thing being absolutely unknown 
to our people, even though we have had to sleep in wet 
clothes for a week at a time. 
However, if you do have a cold, I agree with Dr. 
Moody regarding the treatment of it. His suggestions 
as to the medicine kit are unusually good; complete, 
and not excessive. 
To his advice regarding rattlesnake bite and his 
conclusions, however, I must lake exception. The U. 
S. Government reports, those of Stejneger of the 
Smithsonian Institution, those of Drs. S. Weir Mit- 
chell of Philadelphia, and Mueller of India, and last, 
"Rattlesnake Pete" Gruber of Syracuse, all agree that a 
rattlesnake bite is an injury not to be trifled with. A 
healthy man, in the absence of all treatment, would 
stand an even chance for his life, but his suffering 
would make him regret to the end of his days that he 
did not add a hypodermic to his kit. 
Strychnia is the physiological antidote. Miller says 
in the Medical Record: "While snake poison turns 
off the motor batteries, strychnine, when following it 
as an antidote, turns them on again, acting with the 
unerring certainty of a chemical test if administered 
in sufficient quantities." Whiskey is worse than use- 
less and ammonia almost as bad. 
Potass, permanganate hypodermically, if administered 
immediately after the bite, is of much avail. 
The varieties of rattler in this vicinity are the 
Crotalns horridus, the C. adamantcus, and the copper- 
head, Agkistrodon coutortrix, and they are all venom- 
ous enough to make a bite an extremely serious mis- 
adventure. I heartily indorse the Doctor's statement that 
the sooner people lose their fear of snakes the better, 
but if bitten by a Pennsylvania diamond back do not 
try to laugh it off under the idea that it is no worse 
than a hornet sting, or your family may live to regret 
your carelessness. 
Now, Mr. Editor, having taken up quite a lot of 
you space, I must apologize for trespassing on your 
