MULE CARRYING MINING MACHINERY OVER THE MOUNTAIN TRAILS. 
A PACK MULE PROPERLY EQUIPPED FOR CARRYING A PACK. 
its periodic subjects, well-finding by divination. 
It does this just about so often, and the pros 
and cons as to the specific values of witchhazel 
or other mystic twig are discussed with be¬ 
coming gravity. One devout subscriber declares 
pointblank that he knows a man who did marvels 
of such water-finding, and gives chapter and 
verse with an accuracy that leaves little to be 
desired. Whereat the disgusted editor, sceptic 
of unseens, editorially cries, “Bosh! Coinci¬ 
dence!”—and makes a lifelong enemy; an error 
in business as web as in fact. For, did not j on 
witness declare he saw it done with the witch- 
man blindfold? And he at least believes more 
fervently than ever in the powers of hazel and 
perchance of darkness. Then his small wprld 
scoffs. 
Yet, consider wireless telegraphy, if you 
please. Is it not possible that the witchman’s 
nervous system is susceptible to aqueous in¬ 
fluence to some abnormal degree which gives 
the results thus vouched for? The wizard him¬ 
self knows not how he does it. and modestly 
ascribes it all to the hazel wand, and thus ex¬ 
cites the contumely of a sceptic world. Thus, 
too, is modesty rewarded. Small wonder that 
’tis rare! But this is a by-product of our in¬ 
vestigation. 
Consider Noah. There we have a case of 
psychic force, if you please, of the first water. 
There can be no doubt about him! His was the 
felicity not only to prove up in his own house¬ 
hold his claim to be a prophet, but also to 
drown out of hand all who then saw fit to dis¬ 
agree. True there have been others later. 
There always will be doubters of the equinox 
and other milestones of the almanac. But is 
Noah’s case out of reason? When his pro¬ 
portionate Lulk is reckoned—and there were 
giants in those days—are the few decades of his 
antecedent prediction so very wonderful in the 
light of the frequent miracle of weather-telling 
of the plain, unlettered toad? Yet who doubts 
the wisdom of an umbrella when from above he 
hears the tree-toad’s pipe? 
Noah and the tree-toad are not alone upon 
their pinnacle of malignant glory. There are 
others, mere men, even in these modern days; 
enough to make Noah explainable to the new 
century, even as the toothsome lobster of to¬ 
day in his short and infant innocence makes un¬ 
derstandable the existence of the pre-Noachian 
trilobite of the stony heart. Some one loved 
him, sometime, somewhere, once—the trilobite, 
I mean, not Noah. 
One modern as a fact I have in definite mind. 
Rusty his boots are, seldom touched by hand of 
Dago or the sable knight whom he of the 
brown eyes and olive skin has ousted from his 
realm among the brushes. Men smile as the 
boots pass by, and utter slurs at the Bohemian 
ways of literary folk. Little they know that 
even as heathen of old they are maligning thus 
a prophet! Yet for a term of years not once 
hath that man indulged in the luxury of a 
“shine” without a sharp rain following within 
the brief space of a day; and in thoughtless 
inversion of cause and effect his office associates 
long have been wont to urge him, before some 
coming holiday, not to shine his boots, for love 
of them. Can this be chance? Science knows 
no such arrangement in the universe. Can it 
be a rigid, aqueous fate, a Grecian tragedy in 
our modern “Athens”? Not so. Beyond a 
doubt ’tis atavism, a survival of the ark’s far 
day, seen dimly in the witchman with his hazel, 
more clearly in the tree-toad’s plaint, and in this 
matter of the boots made definite beyond a 
scientific doubt. ’Tis the faint stirrings of com¬ 
ing events rippling against an over-sensitized 
soul, awaking vague aspirations of creating for 
itself a shining boundary like a gleaming river- 
strand. 
’Tis the psychic force of water. 
John Preston True 
Mountain Travel in Mexico. 
The tourist who rides through the country in 
a Pullman car, and writes a book upon his re 
turn, telling what he has seen, has really learned 
about as much about Mexico- as an Englishman 
would of the United States in going from New 
York to Chicago. As yet no railroad has suc¬ 
ceeded in crossing the great Sierra Madres, 
though some five or six have started and built to 
the mountains which seemed to say, “So far and 
no further shalt thou go.” And so the ease- 
loving traveler never sees the grandest and 
loveliest part of the country. 
If you would see Mexico in all her grandeur 
and beauty, you must do so from the back of a 
mule and not from a car window. To do this 
requires experience, and to do it right requires 
much experience, for not only do you travel mule- 
back, but your bedding, provisions and entire 
camp outfit as well, and not only your comfort, 
but your very life may depend on starting out 
properly equipped. I have known of many parties 
coming to grief in that wild region, and it was 
nearly always the result of starting out wrong. 
The trouble with an amateur is that he wants 
to start with too much equipage, and when he 
gets out a hundred miles or so from civilization, 
he finds that half his stuff is valueless; and after 
he has worn out his mules and has had to walk 
THREE HUNDRED POUNDS OF ORE. 
MULE LOADED WITH IRON PIPING GOING TO THE MINES. 
