228 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 
of the natives of the country. The night 
scenes in the pitch-pine States of the 
South have long formed themes in prose 
and poetry, but those States are in the 
flat-land coasts of our country, with no 
scenery to give any of the strange, weird 
effects of a broken land. At one camp I 
made upon a high potrero, I saw such a 
scene. It was in a little flat place in the 
mountain, where the grass was good for 
the mules, but where the water was far 
down the precipitous ravine or box canon 
that opened out by a gorge to a great 
barranca as deep and wide as the Grand 
Canon of the Colorado. A half-dozen 
men at a time, all with pitch-pine torches, 
descended after water, or to drive the 
mules to and from water. As they cut 
long slivers of pine, eight to ten feet in 
length, that blaze for two-thirds to three- 
