The next day this gentleman returned my call, carrying his bow and arrows.  I had already learned in Batopilas that the party of Indians who, about two years ago, had been exhibited by a now deceased traveller as representative cave-dwellers, had been gathered mainly in the neighbourhood of Yoquibo.  My visitor had been one of the troupe, and I was eager to find out what impression the civilised world had made on this child of nature, who had never known anything but his woods and his mountains.  Therefore, almost my first question was, “How did you like Chicago?” “It looks very much like here,” was the unexpected reply.  What most impressed him, it seemed, was neither the size of the city nor its sky-scrapers, though he remembered these, but the big water near which those people dwelt.  He had liked riding in the railroad cars, but complained that he had not had enough to eat on the journey.

His experience on the trip had familiarised him with the white man and his queer, incomprehensible ways, and made him something of a philosopher.  I wanted him to accompany me on my visits to the few houses here, as the people were very shy and timid.  Although he was very much engaged, as I could see, having to look after his animals as well as his wife, he obligingly went with me to two houses.  We saw a woman with twins; one of them a miserable-looking specimen, suffering from lack of food.

There were also some cave-dwellings near Yoquibo, one or two of which were occupied.  In the afternoon, when I went out alone, the people all disappeared the moment they saw me approaching, except one group of strangers who had come to beg and did not pay any attention to me.  They were too busily engaged in making ready for the pot a certain kind of larvae, by extracting them from the cocoon, a small white sac of silky texture found on the strawberry tree.

The guide told me that Indians like these, who beg for food, always return, to those who give them alms, the amount of the gift, as soon as their circumstances allow.

Here in Yoquibo I met one of those Mexican adventurers who under one pretext or another manage to get into the Indian villages and cannot be routed out again.  Certain of them ply some little trade, generally that of a blacksmith, others act as “secretaries,” writing what few communications the Indians may have to send to the government authorities; some conduct a little barter trade, exchanging cheap cotton cloth, beads, etc., for sheep and cattle; but most of them supply the Indians with Mexican brandy, mescal.  The one in Yoquibo had established himself in the only room left intact in the old dilapidated vicarage, and eked out a living by selling mescal to the Indians.