Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/215

 I will avoid details of this march because it followed quite closely the line of the first and second scouts made by Lieutenant Cushing, the preceding year, which have been already outlined. We followed down the dusty bottom of the San Pedro, through a jungle of mesquite and sage brush, which always seem to grow on land which with irrigation will yield bountifully of wheat, and crossed over to the feeble streamlet marked on the maps as Deer Creek. We crossed the Gila at a point where the Mescal and Pinal ranges seemed to come together, but the country was so broken that it was hard to tell to which range the hills belonged. The trails were rough, and the rocks were largely granites, porphyry, and pudding stones, often of rare beauty. There was an abundance of mescal, cholla cactus, manzanita, Spanish bayonet, pitahaya, and scrub oak so long as we remained in the foothills, but upon gaining the higher levels of the Pinal range, we found first juniper, and then pine of good dimensions and in great quantity. The scenery upon the summit of the Pinal was exhilarating and picturesque, but the winds were bitter and the ground deep with snow, so that we made no complaint when the line of march led us to a camp on the northwest extremity, where we found water trickling down the flanks of the range into a beautiful narrow cañon, whose steep walls hid us from the prying gaze of the enemy's spies, and also protected from the wind; the slopes were green with juicy grama grass, and dotted with oaks which gracefully arranged themselves in clusters of twos and threes, giving grateful shade to men and animals. Far above us waved the branches of tall pines and cedars, and at their feet could be seen the banks of snow, but in our own position the weather was rather that of the south temperate or the northern part of the torrid zone.

This rapid change of climate made scouting in Arizona very trying. During this campaign we were often obliged to leave the warm valleys in the morning and climb to the higher altitudes and go into bivouac upon summits where the snow was hip deep, as on the Matitzal, the Mogollon plateau, and the Sierra Ancha. To add to the discomfort, the pine was so thoroughly soaked through with snow and rain that it would not burn, and unless cedar could be found, the command was in bad luck. Our Apache scouts, under Macintosh, Felmer, and Besias, were kept from twelve to twenty-four hours in advance of the main body,