We continued our descent, and, having dropped altogether some 2,000 feet, at last found ourselves alongside some lonely and unattractive old adobe houses.  They were built by the Spaniards and are reputed to have once been the smelter of the now abandoned silver mine of Guaynopa.  Only the naked walls remain standing on a decline, which was too steep to give us sufficient camping ground.  So we went still a little further, to the top of a hill near by, where we made a tolerably good camp.

This then was the famous locality of Guaynopa, credited with hiding such fabulous wealth.  There was still another mine here of the same repute, called Tayopa, and both of them are said to have been worked once by the Jesuits, who before their expulsion from Mexico were in possession of nearly all the mines in the country.  According to tradition, the Apaches killed everybody here, and the mines were forgotten until recent times, when ancient church records and other Spanish documents revealed their existence.  Several expeditions have been sent out, one, I believe, by the Government for the purpose of locating them; but being situated in the roughest and most inaccessible part of the Sierra Madre, they are still awaiting their rediscovery, unless, contrary to my knowledge, they have been found in recent years.  There is no doubt that the country carries very rich silver ore, and we ourselves found specimens of that kind; but the region is so difficult of access that it probably would require too great a capital to work the mines.

There was now a plain track leading along the hillside down toward the Rio Aros, which is scarcely two miles off; but the country was so wild and rugged that the greatest care had to be exercised with the animals to prevent them from coming to grief.  The path runs along the upper part of a steep slope, which from a perpendicular weathered cliff drops some 400 feet down into a gorge.  As the declivity of the slope is about forty-five degrees, and the track in some places only about a foot wide, there is no saving it if an animal loses its foothold, or if its pack slips.  All went well, however, until we reached a point where the track commenced to descend, when our villain of a guide tried to drive some burros back on the track, instead of leading each one carefully.  The result was that one of the poor beasts tumbled down, making immense bounds, a hundred feet at a time, and, of course, was killed.

We had no difficulty in fording the Guaynopa Creek near its junction with the Aros River, and selected a camping place on a terrace 200 feet above it.  The stream, which is the one that passes the cave-dwellings, carries a good deal of limpid water, and there are abundant signs that at times it runs very high.  The elevation of the ford, which is here about the same as that of Aros River, 3,400 feet, was the lowest point we reached in our crossing of the Sierra Madre between Chuhuichupa and Temosachic.  It took us almost the entire day to move the animals the one mile and a half to this camp.  On the way we had found some good quartz crystals in the baryte, about four inches high and one inch in width.