Nov., 1916 
MEETING SPRING HALF WAY 
217 
Brownsville and Matamoras were formerly towns of great wealth, Matamoras 
having been the distributing center during the Mexican war; but externally 
the flat-roofed, one story adobes with their softly tinted walls and blinds were 
merely characteristic Mexican dwellings. The iron gratings for doors and win- 
dows may have hinted at vaults and safes of days of opulence but they also 
bespoke the southern climate where doors and windows must needs be open at 
night. The plaza and market place were characteristic and the picturesque 
old cathedral whose chimes could not be rung without the payment of a tax 
had bullet holes left from war times. 
With all this foreign setting it was a surprise to find an enthusiastic bot- 
anist, a woman connected with the Presbyterian mission, actually teaching bot- 
any to the Spanish Seiroritas. Would that some one could have taught them 
the birds ! 
Leaving Brownsville late in the day we were obliged to camp for the night 
within too easy reach of the town, for our road was as historic as the towns 
themselves, and although the tragedies of earlier days were now infrequent, 
we were warned by an old army officer to camp before dark well away from 
the road and to have no late camp fires to attract attention. In spite of the 
keen interest taken in our movements by the Brownsville Mexicans, however, 
the first night passed without incident ; but the second night we camped in 
the mesquite which offers thin cover and in the middle of the night the camp 
guardian awoke to find two mounted Mexicans at the foot of his sleeping bag. 
With the instinct of an old timer who sleeps with his gun in his blankets, he 
had his finger on the trigger ready to shoot through the blankets when the 
men looking down on him — asked the road to Brownsville! 
Farther on our way from the Mexican boundary we passed a party of sul- 
len, hard faced Mexicans driving a band of suspiciously good looking horses, 
which reminded us of the locked gates of the cattle ranches. And later when 
we were crossing King’s Ranch we met three horsemen so well mounted and 
armed that we imagined they might be looking for missing horses. The old 
Texan, however, said they were Mrs. King’s soldiers and that probably “some- 
thing had happened” down at the other end of the ranch and they were “going 
to see about it.” 
In spite of local tragedies we passed safely on our way, our only excite- 
ments supplied by the “varmints” of our old camp man. A cup of water 
poured down what appeared to be a gopher hole in front of the tent one morn- 
ing brought out a tarantula, an inhabitant of the clay soil where as the Texan 
complained, “the mud growed to the tent pins”. A second spider when trying 
to evade pursuit ran down a convenient sleeping bag, hence the name Taran- 
tula Camp ! Perognathus Camp commemorated a little pocket mouse who, 
when a floor without holes was being selected for the sleeping bags, popped 
out of a closed door in the ground and ran into the tent, and who, in searching 
for his door in the night tramped on our beds and finally got into a trap. 
There was also one Rattlesnake Camp, though two earned the name, and the 
shooting of a third rattler coiled in a trail almost led to serious consequences. 
The shot roused a band of range cattle, the most dangerous animals one en- 
counters in the west, and with their keen hunting instinct they took after the 
hunter, who only escaped them by dodging into the chaparral as they came 
charging furiously along, heads and tails up. A Texas long horn at one ranch 
that we passed had a spread of horn measuring about five feet, for the old 
