The wealth of the Tarahumare consists in his cattle.  He is well off when he has three or four head of cattle and a dozen sheep and goats.  There is one instance where a man had as many as forty head of cattle, but this was a rare exception.  They rarely keep horses, and never pigs, which destroy their cornfields; and are believed, besides, to be Spaniards (Gachupines).  Pork, though sometimes eaten, is never sacrificed.  No tame turkeys are kept, but occasionally the people have some hens, and in rare cases a family may keep a turtle dove or a tame quail.  When a man has oxen, he is able to plough a large piece of land and raise enough corn to sell some.  But corn is seldom converted into money.

Here we packed the most necessary things on our best mule, and with the guide and two Indians, who carried bundles, we descended to the river.  The road was fairly good, but as we approached the river we came to several bad places.  In one of these the mule’s aparejo struck a rock, which caused the animal to lose its foothold.  Unresistingly it slid down the steep slope for about seven yards and came against a tree, forefeet on one side, hindfeet on the other.  The boy who led it, eager to do something, managed to get the halter off, so that there was nothing by which to hold the animal except its ears.  I held fast to one of these, steadying myself on the loose soil by grabbing a root sticking out of the ground.  The intelligent animal lay perfectly still over the trunk.  Finally I managed to get out my bowie-knife and cut the ropes off the pack, which rolled down the hill, while the mule, relieved of its bulky burden, scrambled to its feet and climbed up.  It was born and bred in the barranca, otherwise it would never have been able to accomplish this feat.

Toward evening we arrived at the section of a barranca called Ohuivo (Ovi = return, or “the place to which they returned”) on the Rio Fuerte.  The Indians here, although many of them have been affected by the nearness of the mines, are reticent and distrustful, and our guide evidently had not much influence with them.  They refused to be photographed, and even the gobernador ran away from the terrible ordeal.

During the several days I remained in this valley the heat never varied from 100 deg., day and night, which was rather trying and made doing anything an exertion.  The country looked scorched, except for the evergreen cacti, the most prominent of which was the towering pithaya.  Its dark-green branches stand immovable to wind and storm.  It has the best wild fruit growing in the north-western part of Mexico, and as this was just the season when it ripens, the Indians from all around had come to gather it.  It is as large as an egg and its flesh soft, sweet, and nourishing.  As the plant grows to a height of twenty to thirty-five feet, the Indians get the fruit down with a long reed, one end of which has four prongs, and gather it in little crates of split