Having descended into the barranca, which now felt almost uncomfortably warm, after the piercing winds of the highlands, I first visited the plateaus on the southern side, where the Indians have still kept themselves tolerably free from the white man’s evil influence and are very jealous of their land.  One night, while camping in a deep arroyo with very steep sides frowning down on us, one of the Indian carriers woke us with the startling news:  “Get up!  A stone is falling and will strike us!” I heard a noise, and instantly a stone, half the size of a child’s head, hit the informant himself, as he sleepily rose.  He lost his breath, but soon recovered, and no further damage was done.

I secured the necessary carriers and went down again to the river, which I now followed westward from Nogal for about twenty-five miles.  The elevation at Nogal is 4,450 feet, about 800 feet higher than the place at which we left the river again.  At the outset we came upon two very hot springs, the water of which had a yellow sediment.  The gorge was narrow throughout.  Sometimes its two sides rise almost perpendicularly, leaving but a narrow passage for the river.  We then had either to wade in the water or to ascend some thousand feet, in order to continue our way.  But generally there was a bank on one side or the other, and now and then the valley widened, yielding sufficient space for some bushes, or even a tree to grow, though it soon narrowed again.  In some such spots we found a shrub called baynoro, with long, flexible branches and light-green leaves.  Its small, yellow berries were as sweet as honey, but they did not agree with the Mexicans, who had stomach-aches and lost their appetites after eating them.  The Indians made the same complaints, but I felt no ill effects from them.

Along the river we saw the tracks of many raccoons and otters, and there were also ducks and blue herons.

The colour of the water in the deep places was greyish green, and as the river rises in the high sierra, it felt icy cold to wade through.  One day we had to cross it eight times.  On one such occasion, while wading waist-deep, the Indian who carried the photographic outfit in a bag on his back, forgot for a moment, on account of the stinging cold, how far his burden hung down, and let it dip into the water.  The prospect of being prevented, perhaps for a long time to come, from photographing, was very annoying.  Six plate-holders were so wet that I could not even draw the shutters out, but luckily I had more elsewhere.

We came upon several ancient cave-dwellings, all of which were rather small, and attributed by the Tarahumares to the Tubar Indians.  One of them was situated about 250 feet above the bottom of the barranca.  A two-storied, rather irregularly shaped building occupied the entire width of the cave, without reaching to the roof.  The floor of the house was scarcely two yards broad, but the building widened out very