Frederick Schwatka
In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066233259
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I.
| NORTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA—PREPARING FOR THE EXPEDITION—FROM DEMING, N. M., TO CASAS GRANDES, CHIHUAHUA. |
The first chapter describing an expedition is liable to be prosaic to the point of dullness. It is full of promises that are expected to be realized, while as yet nothing has been done. Not one-tenth of these may formulate, and yet the expedition may be a success in unexpected results; for in no undertaking is there so much uncertainty as in travel through little known countries. Then, again, the writer is likely to consider himself called upon to give a lengthy description of the party in the preliminary letter, and, as I have often seen, even descend to an enumeration of the qualities of the cook or the color of the mules. The next night the cook may desert and the mules may run away, so that others must be procured, and therefore they are of no more interest to the reader than any other of the millions of cooks or mules that would make any writer wealthy if he could find a publisher who would print his description of them. I intend to break away from that stereotyped formula in this first chapter and briefly state that I was in the field of Northern Mexico, hoping to obtain new and interesting matter beyond the everlasting descriptions that are now pumped up for the public by versatile writers along the beaten lines of tourist travel, as determined by the railroads, and, occasionally, the diligence lines. I had a good outfit of wagons, horses, mules, and last, but not least, men for that purpose. Each and every member of the expedition will be heard from when anything has been done by them, and not before. When the mule Dulce kicks a hectare of daylight through the cook for spilling hot grease on his heels I will give a description of Dulce and an obituary notice of the cook; but until then they will remain out of the account.
We crossed the boundary south of Deming early in March, 1889, and entered Mexican territory, where our travels can be said to have begun. If one will take the pains to look at a map of this portion of Mexico he will see that it projects into the United States some distance beyond the average northern boundary, the Rio Grande being to our east, and an "offset," as we would say in surveying, being to our west, this "offset" running north and south. This flat peninsula projecting into our own country can be better understood by visiting it and comparing it with the surrounding land of the United States, coupled with a history of the country. Roughly speaking, the Mexican-United States boundary, as settled by the Mexican War, followed the line of the Southern Pacific Railway as now constructed, and the so-called Gadsden purchase from Mexico of a few years later fixed the boundary as we now see it, giving us a narrow, sabulous strip of Mexican territory, but a definite boundary, easily established by surveys.
OUTFITTING AT DEMING
The Mexicans were on the ground and knew just what they were doing when they arranged for selling us this narrow strip; while, as usual, we did everything from Washington, and knew just about as little concerning it as we possibly could and be sure we were purchasing a part of Mexico. The Mexicans ran this flat-topped peninsula far to the north, inclosing lakes, rivers, and springs, and waters innumerable; while, as a generous compensation, they gave us more land to the west, but a land where a coyote carries three days' rations of jerked jack rabbit whenever he makes up his mind to cross it. There is no more comparison between the offset of Mexico that projects here into the United States, and the offset from the United States that projects into Mexico west of here, than there is in comparing the fertile plains of Iowa or Illinois with Greenland or the Great Sahara Desert.
Everyone familiar with the exceedingly rich lands of the Southwest, when so much of it is worthless for want of water, knows how valuable that liquid is in this region, especially if it occurs in quantities sufficiently large for the purposes of irrigation. I have stood on land that I could purchase for five cents an acre or less, and that stretched out behind me for limitless leagues, and could jump on other land whose owner had refused a number of hundreds of dollars an acre, although, as far as the eye could see, there was no more difference between them than between any two adjoining acres on an Illinois farm. The real difference was one to be determined by the surveyor's level, which showed that water could be put on the valuable tract and not on the other. This also is the difference between the Mexican "offset" in the North, lying between the Rio Grande and the meridianal boundary to the west, and the American tract that juts into Mexico just west of this again. They both share the same soil as you gaze at them from the deck of your "burro," and you can even see no difference in them on closer inspection, after your mule has assisted you to alight; but there is a real and tangible value difference of from one hundred to two hundred dollars a year per acre between the grapes and other fruits and vegetables you can raise on one, with water trickling round their roots, and the sagebrush and grease wood of the other, not rating at ten cents a township.
The diplomats of our country at Washington may be all Talleyrands in astuteness, but in the Gadsden purchase they got left so far behind that they have never yet been able to see how badly they were handled in the bargain.
As our people travel along the line of the Southern Pacific Railway, through its arid wastes of sand and sunshine, they can little realize the beautiful country of Northern Chihuahua and Sonora that lies so close to them to the southward. And yet some of this seemingly arid land in Southern New Mexico and Arizona is destined to become of far more value than its present appearance would indicate. Anglo-Saxon energy is converting little patches here and there into fertile spots, and these are constantly increasing. A great portion of the land is fine for cattle grazing, and these little oases make centers of crystallizing civilization, which render the country for miles around valuable for this important industry.
The persons who believe that New Mexico will not eventually become one of the finest States in our Union belong to the class of those who put Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas in the great American desert a decade or two ago.
There is still another physical feature of at least Northern Mexico that I have never seen dwelt upon, even