My chief packer now became ill from the effects of poison ivy.  He was one of those unfortunate individuals who are specially susceptible to it.  According to his own statement it sufficed for him to pass anywhere near the plant, even without touching it, to become afflicted with the disease.  In this case he did not even know where he had contracted it, until the cook showed him some specimens of the plant near an oak tree close by the kitchen tent.  The poor fellow’s lips were badly swollen; he had acute pains in his eyes, and felt unable to move.  Sometimes, he said, the disease would last ten days, and his skin become so tender that he could not endure the weight or contact of his clothes.  But by applying to the afflicted parts of his body a solution of baking soda in water, I was able not only to relieve his suffering, but to enable him, after two days, to continue with us on our journey.

In the meantime we had investigated some caves in the conglomerate of the steep canon side, about 250 feet above the bottom of the gorge, and rather difficult of access.  The house group occupied the entire width of a cave, which was eighty feet across, and there was a foundation wall made of stone and timber underneath the front part.  The walls were made of stone, with mortar of disintegrated rock that lined parts of the cave and were plastered inside and out with the same material.  Lintels of wood were seen in the windows, and rows of sticks standing in a perpendicular position were found in two of the walls inside of the plastering.  On one side of the cave, some two feet off, was a small tower, also in ruins, measuring inside four feet in diameter, while the walls were about six inches thick.

Pinnacles of eroded conglomerate are a prominent characteristic of the landscape west of the Rio Chico; further on, the usual volcanic formation appears again.  After fully twenty miles of travel we found ourselves again in pine forests and at an altitude of 7,400 feet.  Here we were overtaken, in the middle of February, by a rain and sleet storm, which was quite severe, although we were sheltered by tall pine trees in a little valley.  It turned to snow and grew very cold, and then the storm was over.  Here a titmouse and a woodpecker were shot, and the bluebirds were singing in the snow.

Travelling again eleven miles further brought us to the plains of Naverachic, where we camped.  It was quite a treat to travel again on comparatively level land, but, strange to say, I felt the cold so much that I had to walk on foot a good deal in order to keep warm.  The word Naverachic is of Tarahumare origin; nave means “move,” and rachi refers to the disintegrated trachyte formation in the caves.

We had just emerged from a district which at that time was traversed by few people; perhaps only by some illiterate Mexican adventurers, though it had once been settled by a thrifty people whose stage of culture was that of the Pueblo Indians of to-day, and who had vanished, nobody knows how many centuries ago.  Over it all hovered a distinct atmosphere of antiquity and the solemnity of a graveyard.