At Bavispe River we had to remain for some little time to allow the animals to recuperate, and to get them, as far as possible, in condition for the hard work still ahead.  I also had to send back to Nacori for fresh provisions.  Of course, not much was to be gotten there, but we got what there was in the line of food stuffs, panoche (brown sugar) and corn.  My messengers had orders to bring the latter in the form of pinole, that is, toasted corn ground by hand into a fine meal.  This is the most common, as well as the most handy, ration throughout Mexico.  A little bag of it is all the provisions a Mexican or Indian takes with him on a journey of days or weeks.  It is simply mixed with water and forms a tasty gruel, rather indigestible for persons not accustomed to it.  When boiled into a porridge, however, pinole is very nourishing, and forms a convenient diet for persons camping out.  Aside from this we still had a supply of wheat flour sufficient to allow the party fifteen pounds a day, and our stock of canned peas and preserved fruit, though reduced, was not yet exhausted.  The jerked beef had given out even before we reached the main sierra, and we had to depend on our guns for meat.  Luckily, the forest was alive with deer, and there were also wild turkeys.  Thus there was no difficulty about provisions, although the Americans sighed for their beloved bacon and hot biscuits.

Fish seemed scarce in this part of the Bavispe River; at least we did not succeed in bringing out any by the use of dynamite.  We got only five little fish—­one catfish, and four suckers, the largest six inches long.

On Christmas Day the black bulb thermometer rose in the sun to 150 deg.  F., although that very night the temperature fell to 22.9 deg.  F., a difference of nearly 130 deg..  The warmth was such that even a rattlesnake was deceived and coaxed out by it.

We made every effort to celebrate Christmas in a manner worthy of our surroundings.  We could not procure fish for our banquet, but one of the Mexicans had the good luck to shoot four turkeys; and Kee, our Chinese cook, surprised us with a plum pudding the merits of which baffle description.  It consisted mainly of deer fat and the remnants of dried peaches, raisins, and orange peel, and it was served with a sauce of white sugar and mescal.  The appreciation of this delicacy by the Mexicans knew no bounds, and from now on they wanted plum pudding every day.

On the upper Bavispe we again found numerous traces of a by-gone race who had occupied these regions long before the Apaches had made their unwelcome appearance.  In fact, all along on our journey across the sierra we were struck by the constant occurrence of rude monuments of people now long vanished.  They became less numerous in the eastern part, where at last they were replaced by cave dwellings, of which I will speak later.