Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/207

 precipitated matters somewhat, but not to a very appreciable extent, since Mason's attack upon the bands of Apache-Mojaves and Apache-Yumas in the "Muchos Cañones" did not take place until the last days of the month of September, and those bands having but slender relations with the other portions of the Apache family over in the Tonto Basin, the latter would not be too much on their guard. Crook started out from his headquarters at Fort Whipple on the day set, and marched as fast as his animals would carry him by way of Camp Verde and the Colorado Chiquito to Camp Apache, a distance, as the roads and trails then measured, of about two hundred and fifty miles. Upon the summit of the Colorado plateau, which in places attains an elevation of more than ten thousand feet, the cold was intense, and we found every spring and creek frozen solid, thus making the task of watering our stock one of great difficulty.

Our line of march led through the immense pine forests, and to the right of the lofty snow-mantled peak of San Francisco, one of the most beautiful mountains in America. It seems to have been, at some period not very remote, a focus of volcanic disturbance, pouring out lava in inconceivable quantities, covering the earth for one hundred miles square, and to a depth in places of five hundred feet. This depth can be ascertained by any geologist who will take the trail out from the station of Ash Fork, on the present Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, and go north-northeast, to the Cataract Cañon, to the village of the Ava-Supais. In beginning the descent towards the Cataract Cañon, at the "Black Tanks," the enormous depth of the "flow" can be seen at a glance. What was the "forest primeval" at that time on the Mogollon has since been raided by the rapacious forces of commerce, and at one point—Flagstaff, favorably located in the timber belt—has since been established the great Ayers-Riordan saw and planing mill, equipped with every modern appliance for the destruction of the old giants whose heads had nodded in the breezes of centuries. Man's inhumanity to man is an awful thing. His inhumanity to God's beautiful trees is scarcely inferior to it. Trees are nearly human; they used to console man with their oracles, and I must confess my regret that the Christian dispensation has so changed the opinions of the world that the soughing of the evening wind through their branches is no longer a message of