Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/35

 the garrison fully occupied. What with sickness, heat, bad water, flies, sand-storms, and utter isolation, life would have been dreary and dismal were it not for the novelty which helped out the determination to make the best of everything. First of all, there was the vegetation, different from anything to be seen east of the Missouri: the statuesque "pitahayas," with luscious fruit; the massive biznagas, whose juice is made into very palatable candy by the Mexicans; the bear's grass, or palmilla; the Spanish bayonet, the palo verde, the various varieties of cactus, principal among them being the nopal, or plate, and the cholla, or nodular, which possesses the decidedly objectionable quality of separating upon the slightest provocation, and sticking to whatever may be nearest; the mesquite, with palatable gum and nourishing beans; the mescal, beautiful to look upon and grateful to the Apaches, of whom it is the main food-supply; the scrub oak, the juniper, cottonwood, ash, sycamore, and, lastly, the pine growing on the higher points of the environing mountains, were all noted, examined, and studied, so far as opportunity would admit.

And so with the animal life: the deer, of the strange variety called "the mule"; the coyotes, badgers, pole-cats, rabbits, gophers—but not the prairie-dog, which, for some reason never understood by me, does not cross into Arizona; or, to be more accurate, does just cross over the New Mexican boundary at Fort Bowie in the southeast, and at Tom Keam's ranch in the Moqui country in the extreme northeast.

Strangest of all was the uncouth, horrible "escorpion," or "Gila monster," which here found its favorite habitat and attained its greatest dimensions. We used to have them not less than three feet long, black, venomous, and deadly, if half the stories told were true. The Mexicans time and time again asserted that the escorpion would kill chickens, and that it would eject a poisonous venom upon them, but, in my own experience, I have to say that the old hen which we tied in front of one for a whole day was not molested, and that no harm of any sort came to her beyond being scared out of a year's growth. Scientists were wont to ridicule the idea of the Gila monster being venomous, upon what ground I do not now remember, beyond the fact that it was a lizard, and all lizards were harmless. But I believe it is now well established that the monster is not to be handled with impunity