294 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 7, 1912 
TOMB OF GUERRERO IN TOWN OF TIXTLA. 
one end of which was attached to a shrub at 
the mouth of the cave. Our torches were burn¬ 
ing low, and so we decided to eat our lunch and 
then retrace our steps, feeling convinced that 
with so small a force and such short supplies, we 
could not hope to get into the real depths of 
the cave. While we were eating I noticed a 
dull roar, the source of which seemed distant, 
yet the sound of which was quite clear. I turned 
to the guide for explanation, and he replied: 
“The rivers, Patron, which flow beneath the cave. 
When we return to the outer world we shall see 
them.’’ 
True to his word, as we stepped out into 
the sunlight two hours later, he led the way 
down and around the corner of the mountain, 
and there, out of two other gigantic natural tun¬ 
nels in the face of the cliff, gushed two good- 
sized rivers, neither of which could have been 
flowing less than 12000 inches of water, and 
this the dry season at that. 
The Indians have named these streams the 
San Geronimo and the Coatepec Harinas, and 
they flow together to form one stream, the Ama- 
cusac, which in turn flows into the Balsas. The 
place where these streams leave the mountain is 
about 500 feet below the entrance to the great 
cave, and some 300 yards around the curve in 
the great hill. No one, not even the Indians, 
has ventured to explore the caverns whence flow 
the twin rivers, notwithstanding the fact that 
there are fairly good trails, apparently carved 
by man from the solid rock, following the 
streams back into the mountain. 
There is a legend among the Indians that 
back on the subterranean course of the San 
Geronimo River there is a great lake on whose 
shores stands an ancient city of the cave or 
cliff dwellers, once peopled by a large band of 
aborigines, but in whose ruins no modern man 
has ever stood. There is probably some truth 
in this legend, as bits of water-worn carved wood 
come floating down both these streams at sea¬ 
sons of flood, and along their banks are occas¬ 
ionally found fragments of carved stone unlike 
any of the carvings found in the ruined cities 
of the surrounding country. 
Determined that the real ruins of these lost 
tribes were along the underground course of the 
river, and believing that there must be com¬ 
munication with the rivers below and the great 
caves of Cacahuamilpa above, I determined to 
attempt to reach the fabled lake by following the 
course of the San Geronimo, which we ascer¬ 
tained was about twelve feet deep at its point 
of exit from the cave, and which was running 
like a mill race when it broke from the moun¬ 
tain side, showing that its course underneath the 
mountain must be at a considerable down grade. 
That afternoon we rested and explored the 
mountain, finding several small caves which 
showed evidences of having been walled up in 
ancient times, and in which I found shards of 
comparatively modern pottery, but nothing which 
I considered of any value. Probably these caves 
had been used as shelters by goat herds of days 
since the Spanish occupation. 
Next morning, provided with a number of 
torches, our balls of string and food for two 
days, we struck out up the narrow stone trail 
beside the river. It was a silent procession, the 
roar of the water drowning our voices, and its 
spray so drenching the path that walking was 
precarious in the extreme. The cavern widened 
for a space after we entered, and the stream 
became 1 correspondingly shallower. So far as 
we could see from the light of our combined 
torches cast on the shallow water, there were no 
fish, but caught in the riffles of the stone bed 
of the stream we found several rounded pellets 
of jade and a number of beads, both of diorite 
and of jade, giving some foundation for our 
hopes that further above we should find a city 
of the dead just as it was abandoned by its 
builders. 
On and on we pressed for fully five miles, 
finding the trail perfect, though worn, and dis¬ 
covering carved hand-holds in the rock wall in 
places where the ledge narrowed. Bats fluttered 
about our heads, while an occasional owl. fright¬ 
ened from its day time roost by the glare of 
our torches, flew wildly down stream, almost 
fanning our faces with its downy wings. Again 
the roar of the waters increased, but the cave 
did not narrow. Gradually the roof raised until 
it was lost in the darkness beyond the arch of 
the glow of our torches. The roar became thun¬ 
derous, bats and owls alike disappeared, I kicked 
what appeared to be a small half-round boulder 
out of the path, and my foot went through it 
as though it was paper. It was a fragment of a 
skull, of which nothing but a thin shell of lime 
was left. Here was hope indeed and then the 
guide, who was perhaps a hundred yards ahead, 
shouted: "El salto del agua! El salto del 
agua!” (“The leap of waters! The leap of 
waters!’’) and we stood in the presence of a 
waterfall whose summit we could not see, but 
whose spray drenched us to the skin, even 
through our heavy khaki clothing, and whose 
torrent plunged into a pool worn deep by the 
ages of ceaseless wear of the waters; churning 
the great pot into foam, and finally coming out 
headlong through a crevice in the wall of the 
pool—the San Geronimo River which flowed past 
our feet. 
From the light of our torches we could see 
up, up, perhaps 150 feet along the face of the 
sheet of water, but still there was no end, no 
sight of the beginning of the fall. Far up in 
the dome of the vast cavern, somewhere beyond 
the ken of man, the river started on its plunge 
over a buried cliff which is, at least, more than 
a hundred and fifty feet high. Nothing less than 
an electric searchlight of considerable power 
would reveal the top of the fall, but after half 
an hour’s rest we determined to try to follow 
the worn trail around the fall, but the guide, 
going ahead, returned to report that while there 
had been a carved stairway, evidently leading on 
up the cavern, it had been broken, and it was 
impossible to go further. 
I followed him on to the end of the ledge, 
about a hundred feet further, and right at the 
edge of the falling sheet of water. There I 
could see, across a gap of about twenty-five feet, 
a well-defined stairway, leading up, up, also in 
the very spray of the cataract, but there was no 
way of crossing the gap broken out of the trail, 
VIEW SHOWING THE MOUNTAIN WALL ON THE 
SPURS OF WHICH ARE LOCATED THE 
RUINS OF QUECHOMICTLIPAN. 
