ave,
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.

Chapter VI

Fossils, and One Way of Utilising Them--Temosachic--The First
Tarahumares--Ploughs with Wooden Shares--Visit to the Southern
Pimas--Aboriginal Hat Factories--Pinos Altos--The Waterfall near
Jesus Maria--An Adventure with Ladrones.

About thirty miles from the village of Temosachic (in the Tarahumare
tongue Remosachic means Stone Heap) we entered the plain of Yepomera,
and came upon an entirely different formation, limestone appearing
in an almost horizontal layer some thirty feet deep. In this bed
the Mexicans frequently find fossils, and at one place four large
fossil bones have been utilised as the corner posts of a corral
or inclosure. We were told that teeth and bones were accidentally
found at a depth of from twenty to thirty feet and some bones were
crystallised inside. This formation, which stretches itself out toward
the east of Temosachic, but lies mai