410 
The firing of the heavy rifle among the pack 
train had disorganized the animals, but we 
finally rounded them up and started into the 
desert on the south side of the Laguna. \\ e 
certainly had had an exciting experience in our 
first few minutes in the desert of Lower Cali¬ 
fornia, having encountered quail, ducks, rabbits, 
hawks and a rattlesnake within the first hour 
of our arrival; but just as soon as we left the 
vicinity of the water all life ceased, with one 
notable exception. No sooner had we started 
into the desert than we were surrounded by 
gnats. They were almost invisible, but hung 
around our heads in swarms and, as we soon 
found, were capable of biting savagely. The 
sun, too, came out exceedingly hot. We could 
feel the force of its rays in a way that is never 
felt in the North. For four hours we plodded 
along at about three miles an hour through the 
sand and greasewood of the desert, with noth¬ 
ing to distract our minds from the heat and the 
gnats, but at noon we struck some stunted 
ironwood trees and a little grass, and taking 
off the packs and saddles, we turned the 
animals loose, made a fire, boiled tea and had 
lunch. 
The water in the canteens was hopelessly 
warm by this time, but fortunately we had a 
couple of canvas water bags with us, which 
kept the water cool through constant evapora¬ 
tion. Our water supply, however, was getting 
very low, and it was necessary to have more 
fresh water that evening, so as soon as we had 
packed up and started on our afternoon's 
march, we gave all the empty canteens to 
Eleno and sent him ahead to a spring at the 
foot of the mountain range on the southern 
side of the Laguna. Meantime we pushed 
straight on to reach a point where the arm of 
the Laguna stretched back into the desert. 
There we could camp and the horses would have 
plenty of water to drink. 
From our camp in the pass it was twenty-six 
miles to the campsite at the arm of the lake, 
and in spite of all we could do, it was again 
long after dark when we reached camp. Fortu¬ 
nately the midges stopped operations as soon 
as darkness came on, permitting us to camp 
and have supper in peace. We were all through 
before Eleno turned up, and he was welcome, 
as we had entirely exhausted our fresh water 
by that time. 
It was decided to lie over one day and rest 
both ourselves and the animals. I was very 
glad to have a day out of the saddle and spent 
the time bathing in the lake and chasing blue 
quail up and down the little sand ridges back 
of the water, but with all my pot-hunting, I 
did not materially reduce the number of quail 
and would not have secured enough for supper 
for the party had I not jumped and killed a jack 
rabbit. Late in the afternoon the Captain went 
to the spring in the mountains to get a new 
supply of water, and Eleno, J. G. M. and I 
took a ride into the foothills in the hope of 
seeing a deer, but we had no success, not even 
seeing a thoroughly fresh track. 
In the morning we again packed up and 
started through the desert. As soon as we left 
the water, it was the same monotonus desert, 
with no sign of wild life. At noon we struck 
back to the edge of the Laguna again to water 
the stock, and on getting to the water’s edge, 
found a miserable half-wild eow mired down. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
J. G. M. said the last thing he expected to see 
in Lower California was a cow stuck in the 
mud. It was fortunate for the poor creature 
that we appeared when we did, as she had evi¬ 
dently been there several days and the buzzards 
had begun to gather and even to pick at her 
while she was still alive. Captain Funcke, J. 
G. M. and I were unable to get her out, so we 
waited for the pack train, which had fallen a 
couple of miles behind. Before it arrived I had 
made another addition to the bag we secured in 
Lower California by killing a huge plover. It 
was a gray bird with a white band across its 
wings and was at least three times the size of 
any plover I had ever seen before. Its wing 
spread was enormous, as when I held the tip 
of one wing in the fingers of my outstretched 
arm, the tip of the other wing stretched beyond 
my shoulder. 
Soon after I secured the plover, the pack 
train came up and we went to work to extri¬ 
cate the cow. At first we tried to pull her out 
with ropes around her neck, but she was so 
firmly set that we might have pulled her head 
off, but we would never have dragged her loose. 
Finally we were forced to dig out her legs from 
the mud, aiid then Eleno and Louis got hold 
of her tail and Captain Funcke and I got hold 
of the rope around her neck and we dragged her 
out on to firm ground. For about twenty 
minutes she was too cramped to get up, but at 
last we were relieved to see her get to her feet 
and walk off through the sand. 
All the time that we had been rescuing the 
cow we were cursing the necessity that kept us 
inactive. We had a long day before us and the 
hour and a half that we wasted was more than 
valuable, but there was no help for it and we 
could only keep on and do our best to make as 
good time as possible. 
About two o’clock we struck some grass, 
where we let the animals graze while we had 
lunch and then we pushed straight across the 
desert again. Night came on but we still pushed 
on, as Captain Funcke had in mind a place 
where he thought the horses could feed well on 
some bunch grass that grew in certain places 
in the desert. Luckily for us, however, J. G. M. 
told the Captain that he thought the pack train 
had got so far behind that we had better wait 
for it. We therefore stopped and made a fire 
and in about twenty minutes Eleno and Louis 
came up with the pack animals. 
They certainly were not a pleasant party. 
Louis was mad all the way through at having 
to get supper again in the dark, and he said 
his mule had fallen on him in stepping in the 
hole of a kangaroo rat. Eleno, too, had a bad 
case of sulks. He had killed a young hawk with 
a stone during the afternoon trip which he 
sullenly cooked, informing Louis that there was 
nothing else fit to eat and therefore he had to 
eat the hawk. It was so dark that I never 
discovered whether he really ate it or not, and 
therefore I do not know’ whether he did this 
seriously or as an insult to the bacon and beans 
on which we were subsisting. They were an 
unhappy party that evening, and I would not 
have been surprised if either Jackson or Eleno 
had quit. Doubtless they would have done so 
had it not been for the seventy miles of desert 
that lay between us and civilization. But the 
night’s rest put everybody in a better humor 
and we started out early for our first camp in 
[March 18 , 1911 . 
the sheep country, which lay in the Sierra de 
Tanaka, in front of us. 
These mountains now showed plainly about 
twenty miles away, being a low range of red 
volcanic rocks, none of them more than three 
thousand feet high. Sierra de Tanaka might 
be translated into the cistern mountains, as they 
derive their name from the fact that in many 
places in these mountains the rock forms 
natural cisterns. During the rainy season these 
are filled with rain water from the cliffs above, 
and in many cases, the water remains there dur¬ 
ing the entire year, especially where the tank 
lies in the bottom of a deep arroyo, so that the 
sun very rarely gets to the water. Most of the 
tanks in the mountains cannot be reached by 
horses, but there are several which are ac¬ 
cessible to stock, and at these Captain Funcke 
expected to camp. 
About one o’clock we reached the mountains 
and camped a quarter of a mile below Valdez 
Tanaka. This tank is the largest in the moun¬ 
tains, being situated in the bottom of a canon, 
and holding several thousand gallons. It was 
a beautiful dark pool, surrounded on every side 
but one with nearly perpendicular cliffs. The 
trail ran up the canon to the low r er side of the 
tank, and here we again watered the horses and 
turned them out. The tank was full of pure 
cold water, and from the worn appearance of 
the trail and the rocks, it was evidently a 
famous camping ground. The tank and also the 
high peak of Valdez Mountain immediately be¬ 
hind it, were named for an outlaw who had dis¬ 
covered the tank about fifty years ago and long 
made it his headquarters. Captain Funcke said 
there was good sheep country all around Valdez 
and we expected to hunt there for at least two 
days. We also expected at this point to meet 
the other outfit belonging to Captain Funcke, 
who were supposed to be on their way out. 
They had with them Captain Funcke’s regular 
cook and Eleno’s brother. The Captain had 
been with them the first part of the trip, but 
when they wanted to stay a little longer, he 
left them to come out and meet us. 
Our first day in the sheep country was clear 
and fine. Not that this was a particularly 
noticeable occurrence, as every day in Lower 
California is almost sure to be beautiful and 
sunny. Early in the morning Eleno and I 
ascended Valdez Mountain. When we reached 
the top we had to get over the steep rim rock. 
I did not mind going up, but I thought that I 
would not like to come down a worse place in 
the dark, and I was completely at a loss to com¬ 
municate my ideas to Eleno. Finally I remem¬ 
bered that in a magazine story, a Mexican had 
spoken of a bull as a “Mucho malo toro,” so 
I picked out the steepest place I could find, and 
by pointing at it and saying “mucho malo,” 
shaking my head and saying “nocte,” over and 
over again, I finally got him to understand that 
I did not want to go down any very steep 
places in the dark. I knew that Eleno got my 
idea all right, as he motioned that we would 
go around the other side of the mountain and 
come down another way, where it was “bueno” 
—good. 
The top of Valdez Mountain, I found, was a 
broad almost flat tableland, cut up with a large 
number of small gulches. As we looked across 
the mesa, it seemed as if it would be easy to 
cross it, but we soon found that the arroyos 
