March 25, ign.J 
451 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
to the top of some nearby mountain to view the 
scenery, which was wonderful. From every 
point there was a magnificent view of red moun¬ 
tains, white desert and blue laguna, while above 
all hung the still bluer sky of the South, Fvery 
day was the perfect June day, and every night 
we went to sleep under the stars, waking up 
once or twice to see how near we were to dawn 
by the position of the dipper, and at last getting 
out of bed at daylight to drink coffee and smoke 
till breakfast was ready. 
The ironwood trees around the camp were 
connected with ropes festooned with strips of 
sheep meat, drying in the sun. In two days it 
was dry and hard as oak and mighty poor eating. 
I was lucky enough to nickname the jerked 
venison eagle meat, which was translated into 
Spanish as “carne de gavalan.” It rejoiced 
Eleno, the captain and Mr. Dunne very much, 
and I believe will remain long after all memories 
of me are forgotten. 
Though camping was ideal, yet we were 
cursed with J. G. M.’s bad luck. He was my 
senior by twenty-five years, yet he hunted hard 
and long and with no success. During the next 
two days he saw two bunches of sheep, but one 
had no rams in it, and the other was seen so 
late in the day and at such long range that it 
was never located again. Worst of all, we found 
on investigation that the two tanks beyond the 
Red Tanaka where we expected to camp were 
so low that we could not camp near them, so 
that on the third day we were forced to pack 
up and cross from the Sierra de Tanaka into 
the foothills of the Sierra Gigantica. This was 
the range of mountains along the base of which 
we had come in our journey from Calexico, and 
we now camped at a spring called Las Palmitas, 
which lay in the foothills of the range. The 
spring was a pool of muddy water which never 
dries. It had at one time been surrounded by 
palms, which had been cut down. 
Near the Red Tanaka we had seen some shal¬ 
low caves in the rocks with old fire-places in 
front of them, which we were told were old 
Indian camps, and between the Red Tanaka and. 
Las Palmitas on the hard stony flats of the 
desert we found old Indian trails from one 
waterhole to another. They ran wonderfully 
straight from point to point and their appearance 
testified to many years of barefooted or moc- 
casined travelers. At Las Palmitas, too, there 
were many flat stones worn into hollows by the 
Indians who had used them for grinding the 
beans of the mesquite tree. And everywhere 
through the desert we saw many pieces of rough 
pottery which had once been the water jars of 
the natives. The captain said that at one time 
the peninsula had supported large tribes of In¬ 
dians, but that the twin scourges of smallpox 
and measles had partially exterminated them. 
There was something inexpressibly pathetic in 
these traces of a vanished race. It seemed that 
when a people had been able to win a living 
from such a desolate land, that Providence 
might have left them in peace. But the plagues 
of the white man have destroyed all but a scat¬ 
tered remnant. 
There were a couple of families of San Cata¬ 
rina Indians located a few miles from Las Pal¬ 
mitas. Two or three of the men came over to 
our camp and developed into that most objec¬ 
tionable of all beings, the camp loafer. They 
wore cotton shirts, and shoes and overalls, so 
they had no virtue of being picturesque, while 
their undoubted propensity as sneak thieves kept 
us always more or less on our guard. They 
also had one or two wild goose chases on which 
they would have liked to have enlisted Eleno, 
as he was now a capitalist by dint of having 
two months’ wages coming to him. 
One of these concerned a lost mine. The 
discoverer was an Indian who undertook to lead 
a party of other Indians to it and give them 
untold wealth. Unfortunately, just as the party 
reached the proper arroyo, the guide shot him¬ 
self through the stomach with his rifle, and the 
others, thinking this was caused by evil spirits, 
had incontinently fled, so that the mine was still 
undiscovered. The other tale was even wilder. 
It concerned a lost mission which had been 
FILLING A CANTEEN. 
es'ablished by the Spanish priests and deserted' 
and lost when the Indians were carried off by 
the pestilence. This had become an established 
legend and the bells of the mission were sup¬ 
posed to be pure gold and silver, so that weaith 
would come to any discoverer of the lost mission 
of Santa Isabel. One of our loafing friends was 
sure he could find it if backed by proper re¬ 
sources. 1 hey talked much on the subject to 
Eleno, and I had a clear view of the promoters 
living high on the supplies furnished by the in¬ 
vestor, Eleno, while the whole party wandered 
for several months through the mountains look¬ 
ing for wonderful mines and romantic lost mis¬ 
sions. 
There is nothing more disagreeable than camp 
loafers, but in spite of them the days at Las 
Palmitas were very pleasant. There were plenty 
of quail and rabbits, and also a large number of 
the banded Arizona pigeon. These are beauti¬ 
ful birds of a bluish gray with a white band 
across the wings and tails. We ki! ed a few 
for the table, but for the most part left them 
undisturbed. Coyotes howled all night long 
around our camp, but we never got a shot, and 
our attempts to take them in some traps of the 
captain’s were unsuccessful. Whether this was 
caused by the intelligence of the coyotes or the 
poor quality of our attempts to outwit them will 
always remain in doubt. 
I had much leisure at Las Palmitas and 
amused myself as I pleased. I had often heard 
that the interior of the bisnaga would supply 
water to the thirsty, so one day I set out to 
try out this theory. I worked at a bisnaga for 
a long time with a heavy sheath knife, and after 
cutting all round, took the butt of my shotgun 
and tried to knock off the top with a light tap. 
1 his did not affect the bisnaga, but it cracked 
my shotgun stock in a dozen places. The wood 
must have become very rotten and brittle with 
age. At any rate, it kept me busy for a long 
time repairing it with some wire and a pair of 
pliers. I did a fearful and wonderful job, but 
in spite of its appearance I continued to use it 
effectively for the rest of the trip. Later I went 
back with a hatchet and beheaded the bisnaga, 
and found an interior of very hard green pulp 
with considerable moisture in it. Any wanderer 
expecting to use bisnagas for drinking purposes 
should have either a hatchet, a sword or still 
better a good cross-cut saw. If he wishes fo 
be fully prepared, he should always have a cider 
press with him. On the whole, it is easier to 
carry an extra large canteen. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
About the time when arc lights were first in¬ 
stalled by towns in the West, wild geese were 
abundant. One town turned on its new street 
lights in autumn, and as a large river was near¬ 
by, on almost every night that autumn and the 
following spring when there was fog, geese 
could be heard overhead. At first the excited 
honking of the birds was novel and the people 
craned their necks, thinking the geese could be 
seen, they were so close; but in time there were 
those who got tired of the clamor and claimed 
it kept them awake. They were not the sports¬ 
men of the town. The sportsmen were kept 
awake by the geese; no doubt of that. We all 
suffer from the shooting fever at times, but it 
is seldom that our favorite game comes to us 
to torment us still more. 
I was fortunate. A particular friend was in 
charge of the local daily paper, and his night's 
work ended about 3 o’clock. When the condi¬ 
tions were favorable, I turned my key over to 
him, and the next morning he entered my room 
very quietly for a heavy man clad in shooting 
gear. My own preparations made, we crept down 
to the kitchen and breakfasted on the good 
things old black Mandy had placed for us the 
night before, drank our coffee and slipped away 
to the river and our boat. I have never pre¬ 
pared for a day’s shooting with less fuss and 
preparation, and there was always enough time 
to put out the decoys, dig our sand-hole blinds, 
and have a smoke before day dawned. 
My companion had but one eye, but it was 
worth fifty ordinary eyes in locating game, and 
backed by his ten-bore gun, it was fatal to the 
geese that came within range. I wonder where 
Johnnie Healy is now, and whether he really 
was the originator of his favorite expression, 
“I would rather fish than eat, and I would 
rather shoot than fish.” So far as I know he 
never declined an invitation to do either one. 
Grizzly King. 
