Though it was impossible to secure a new guide, I still made a start next day, following a fairly good track which leads south toward Guachochic.  Yet further obstacles presented themselves.  The animals began to give out.  It was the season of the year when they change their coats, and are in poor condition even under the best circumstances, and mine were exhausted from lack of food.  They would not eat the dry grass, and the green pasture was still too scanty to suffice for their maintenance.  The information that the natives had burned all the grass proved correct to its fullest extent, so there was nothing for me to do but to establish a camp, scarcely a day’s journey off, at Tasajisa, where there was some pasture along the ridges that had as yet escaped the fire of the Indians.  Leaving the larger part of my outfit and about half of my mules in charge of my chief packer, Mr. Taylor and I continued the journey with the best and strongest of the animals, making a circuitous tour to the little mining town of Zapuri, in the neighbourhood of which were some caves I wanted to investigate.

After a day’s journey we turned westward and got beyond the range of the fires.  Turkeys were seen close to our camp and appeared plentiful; I also saw a giant woodpecker, but just as I got ready to shoot, it flew away with a great whirr of its wings.  We soon began to descend, and after a long and fatiguing day’s travel over cordons and sierras, and through a wide barranca surrounded by magnificent towering mountains, we arrived, late in the afternoon, at Zapuri.  The superintendent of the mine, to whom I brought a letter of introduction from the owner of the property, received us with cordial hospitality.  Here the climate was splendid; the nights were just pleasantly cool, the mornings deliciously calm; they were all the more enjoyed after the windy weather of the sierra.

Immediately upon my arrival here I had a chance, through the courtesy of the superintendent, to secure a Mexican and some strong mules, which took Mr. Taylor over to Parral on his way back to the United States.  Mr. Hartman remained with the expedition two months longer, to join me again the following year for a few months.  I also got a guide for myself and made an excursion to the caves in the neighbouring barrancas.  After we had gone some ten miles over very bad roads, we came to the home of an old Tarahumare woman, who was reputed to be very rich.  Knowing Mexican exaggeration in this regard, I computed that the twelve bushels of pesos she was supposed to have hidden might amount, perhaps, to $50 or $100 Mexican money.  Whatever her wealth was, she showed it only in a lavish display of glass beads around her scrawny neck; they must have weighed at least six or eight pounds.  But then, her homestead was composed mainly of four or five substantial circular store-houses.