Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/179

 and were compelled to march along its vertical walls of basalt, unable to reach the water in the tiny, entrancing rivulet below, but at last ran in upon the wagon-road from the Little Colorado to Camp Verde. We were getting rapidly down from the summit of the Mogollon, and entering a country exactly similar to that of the major portion of Southern Arizona. There was the same vegetation of yucca, mescal, nopal, Spanish bayonet, giant cactus, palo verde, hediondilla, mesquite, and sage-brush, laden with the dust of summer, but there was also a considerable sprinkling of the cedar, scrub-pine, scrub-oak, madroño, or mountain mahogany, and some little mulberry.

Near this trail there are to be seen several archæological curiosities worthy of a visit from the students of any part of the world. There is the wonderful "Montezuma's Well," a lakelet of eighty or ninety feet in depth, situated in the centre of a subsidence of rock, in which is a cave once inhabited by a prehistoric people, while around the circumference of the pool itself are the cliff-dwellings, of which so many examples are to be encountered in the vicinity. One of these cliff-dwellings, in excellent preservation when I last visited it, is the six-story house of stone on the Beaver Creek, which issues from the cave at Montezuma's Wells, and flows into the Verde River, near the post of the same name. We came upon the trails of scouting parties descending the Mogollon, and learned soon after that they had been made by the commands of Lieutenants Crawford and Morton, both of whom had been doing excellent and arduous work against the hostile bands during the previous summer.

I have already remarked that during this practice march all the members of our command learned General Crook, but of far greater consequence than that was the fact that he learned his officers and men. He was the most untiring and indefatigable man I ever met; and, whether climbing up or down the rugged face of some rocky cañon, facing sun or rain, never appeared to be in the slightest degree distressed or annoyed. No matter what happened in the camp, or on the march, he knew it; he was always awake and on his feet the moment the cook of the pack-train was aroused to prepare the morning meal, which was frequently as early as two o'clock, and remained on his feet during the remainder of the day. I am unable to explain exactly how he did it, but I can assure my readers that Crook