Page:Memoir of a tour to northern Mexico.djvu/64

[ 26 ] Both roads meet again before Saucillo. The San Pablo road is several miles nearer; but as we understood that a miry plain near San Pablo, covered with tequesquite, had by rains become impassable, we took the Santa Cruz road, arrived there in good time, and camped about one mile south of the town. Santa Cruz is a tolerably good looking town, and is said to contain, with the surrounding settlements, about 5,000 inhabitants. The San Pedro creek runs by the town; it is a clear mountain stream, that comes from the western mountains about 100 miles west of Santa Cruz, and takes a semicircular turn from southeast to northwest, through the plain, till it falls, some distance below San Pablo, into the Conchos. Cotton trees grow along its borders. San Pablo, the town which we had reached in our first excursion from Chihuahua, lies about eight miles below Santa Cruz, on the San Pedro, and seems to be a flourishing place, with about 4,000 inhabitants. There is rich cultivated land along the stream, upon which they raise a good deal of maize and some cotton. Near our camp stand a flour mill and a cotton-gin. The latter seemed to be abandoned, but a basin in which the cotton used to be washed, with a waterfall of about 10 feet, afforded us a refreshing shower-bath. We stayed here also the next day.

On April 29, we left for Saucillo, (23 miles.) We travel our day's march always without a noon halt, which is certainly the most convenient for an army. Our way led through the same valley, covered with chaparrál; the road was good, but not quite so level as heretofore. Near Saucillo the mountains approach each other, and form south of it a wide gap leading into another valley. Saucillo itself is a town on the Conchos. This river, whose water-courses extend over one-third of the State of Chihuahua, comes from the northwestern height of the Sierra Madre, takes first a southern, then an eastern and northeastern, and at last a northern direction, and falls, near Presidio del Norte, (therefore also called Presidio de las Juntas,) into the Rio Grande. Its whole course is about 400 miles, and its character as changeable as that of the Mexican rivers; at present it was rather a small stream.

In the mountains southwest from Saucillo some silver mines are worked, the ore of which is smelted here; it is combined with lead, and affords but from one to one and a half ounce of silver in the carga, but the simultaneous production of "greta" (oxyde of lead) makes it nevertheless quite profitable. For the first time since we left Chihuahua) here I saw limestone, instead of the prevailing porphyritie rocks.

April 30.–Went 30 miles to-day, to Santa Rosalia. The gap, leading from the former valley to a new one, is about five miles wide; the road over it is hilly. Nearly half way we passed through la Cruz, a small town, and further below through las Carzas, a smaller place yet, where we crossed the Conchos, and followed its course up to the point at which the Florido river flows into it. There we camped, opposite to the town of Santa Rosalia, which lies on a hill in the angle between the two joining rivers. Southwest from the town, and from our camp, rises a chain of mountains in the distance of about five miles; the rocks are apparently stratified, and no doubt limestone; the Conchos runs along that chain. Near the river in this direction some sulphur springs are found, which are resorted to by the Mexicans for cutaneous and other diseases. I was not at leisure to visit them, but Dr. Gregg, who made an excursion there, informed me that tie temperature of the different springs had been from 105 to 108° Fah., while the atmosphere was 85° Fah. Sediments of pure precipitated