[Illustration: TARAHUMARI TOWN OF CHURO.]
Upon reaching Cusihuiriachic I found that my Winchester rifle had been left in the stage office in Chihuahua. I sent back word to forward it by next stage to Carichic, but as the next stage did not arrive at that place for four or five days we would have just that much start of it in the mountains, and we therefore at that place engaged a Tarahumari Indian boy to bring it whenever it did arrive. The gun reached Carichic at noon of one day, and early the next forenoon the young Indian appeared on our trail with it, having made the distance in one night and a little over half a day. Of course he must have used many short cuts across the country of which we were ignorant; nevertheless it was quite a feat, for the distance traveled by us was about 110 miles.
From Carillo Cajon, where our last camp had been, to the westward and southwestward the scenery steadily becomes grander and more mountainous; until the Grand Barranca of the Urique is reached it fully equals the Grand Cañon of the Colorado at any point on its course. Long before, indeed, on our southward march beautiful vistas break to the right and the left, and especially to the east. About five o'clock one afternoon, just as we were emerging from a dense forest of high pines, and little thinking of seeing stupendous scenery, we suddenly came to the very edge of a cliff fully 1000 feet high, and from which we could look down 4000 to 5000 feet on as grand a scene of massive crags, sculptured rock, and broken barrancas as the eye ever rested on. It was already late in the afternoon, so I determined to remain over a day at this point and devote it to camera and cañon. This camp on the picturesque brink of the Grand Barranca I called Camp Diaz, after Mexico's president.
The Grand Barranca of the Urique is one of the most massive pieces of nature's architecture that the world affords. It is quite similar in some respects to the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and this is the nearest to which I can compare it in the United States. The latter, grand as the scenery undoubtedly is, soon tires by its monotonous aspect of perpendicular walls in traveling any distance, while the Grand Barranca could be followed as far as it deserves the name of "grand" and every view and every vista would have some startling and attractive change to please the eye. It is a "cross" between the Grand Cañon of the Colorado and the Yosemite Valley--if we can imagine such scenery after seeing both. Were the Urique River navigable, fortunes could easily be made by transportation lines carrying tourists to and fro, provided even only one terminus connected with some well-established line of travel. But unfortunately it is not navigable, no amount of money could make it so, and all tourists or travelers who are afraid of a little work or roughing it will miss one of the most magnificent panoramas. It is simply impossible to crowd into a pen-and-ink sketch or a photograph any adequate views of this stupendous mountain scenery. It is rather a field for an artist, who will put the product of his palette and brush on heroic-sized canvas, and make one of the masterpieces of the world. The heart of the Andes or the crests of the Himalayas contain no more sublime scenery than the wild, almost unknown fastnesses of the Sierra Madres of Mexico.