Having effectually started the work of investigation here, I went to look after the second section of my expedition, which had been sent to San Diego.  I covered the thirty-five miles with four pack mules in one day.  There is a charming view from the brow of the sierra over the plains of San Diego, which are fully ten miles wide; but after descending to them I found a hard, cold wind blowing.  The weather here is not at all as pleasant as in the sheltered Cave Valley up in the mountains.

I went to Casas Grandes, a village of 1,200 souls, six miles north of San Diego, and succeeded in getting a draft cashed.  On learning that Mr. Moses Thatcher, a prominent Mormon apostle from Utah, was on a tour of inspection of the colonies, I proceeded to Colonia Juarez, a prosperous Mormon settlement on the Piedras Verdes River, ten miles from Casas Grandes and six miles from San Diego.  It was only four years old, but had already a number of well laid-out broad streets, set on both sides with cottonwood trees, and all the houses were surrounded by gardens.  I explained to Mr. Thatcher that I desired to make excavations in Cave Valley, and he courteously acceded to my wishes, adding that I might take away anything of interest to science.

To reduce expenses, I paid off many of my Mexican men, who then returned to their homes in Sonora, going over the sierra by the trail we had made in coming east.  A few months later several of them returned, bringing others with them, and asked to work again in the camp, which remained in San Diego for about nine months longer—­long enough for us to see quite a little trade in oranges, sugar, tobacco, etc., developing between Sonora and Chihuahua by way of the road cut out by us, and called, after me, el camino del doctor.

Excavations in Cave Valley were continued, and the burial caves gave even better results than the cave-dwellings.  They were located in the eastern side of the canon, which is rarely touched by the sun’s rays.  With one exception the ceilings and sides of these caves were much blackened by smoke.  There was not the slightest trace of house walls, and no other sign that the place had ever been inhabited; therefore, a fire here could have had no other purpose than a religious one, just as the Tarahumares to this day make a fire in the cave in which they bury their dead.  Indeed, at first sight there was nothing in the cave to indicate that they had ever been utilised by man; but below the dust we came upon a hard, concrete floor, and after digging through this to a depth of three feet, we fortunately struck a skull, and then came upon the body of a man.  After this we disinterred that of a mother holding a child in her arms, and two other bodies, all lying on their left sides, their knees half drawn up, and their faces turned toward the setting sun.  All were in a marvellous state of preservation, owing to the presence of saltpetre in the dust.  This imparted to the dead a mummy-like