San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1882-04-13
A TEXAS ADVENTURE.

Four of us, my ranch partner, AL
fred Dinsmore, and myself, and Ger
man house carpenter named West
Anspach, and q colored boy named
"Granr" had set out that day for load
of honey.
A load of honey will sound oddly,
perhaps, to readers East, but that is the
way we get it here. While honey, rich
stores of it, is laid up by the native
bees, the settlers often have resort
to "a bee-tree" when their stock of
sugar and molasses runs low. The
honey is drained from the comb and
put away in jars, and the wax makes
excellent candles.
Twelve or thirteen miles up north of
our location, in the canon of Lipan
creek headquarters of Wichita river,)
there is "bees' nest" which has sup
piled us and the families of three other
stockmen for the last four years.
This enormous beehive is the cliff
on the n.lGn lido of the canon, front
ing south.
The entrance to il is up some forty
feet above the creek bed, where
there is horizontal crack eight or ten
inches wide, running along the face of
the pricipice for 400 or 500 feet
This creek opens back into recesses
in the shattered crags behind; and here
the bees, colony on colony, have their
nests and have laid up honey for many
years.
BY going round and operating from
the top of the cliff, we have at odd
times dislodged considerable portion of
the rock with blasts of gun-powder and
crow-bars -sufficient to secure many
hogsheads Of comb.
Still deeper down, in great pits and
holes, there seems to be vast deposits
of old, thick, candied honey, which
had been drained from the tiers of
comb above, year after year.
Lower down the face of the cliff, the
honey, especially on very hot days,
weeps and oozes out at little cracks and
seems of the assured sand. stone-so
much so that the creek bank is there
completely honey-soaked, and the
water for mile or two below will at
times be perceptibly sweetened.
Much of this escaping honey the
bees themselves carry back up the face
of the cliff.
On pleasant June day, the canon
and high above it, the air will be dark
ened by the incoming and outgoing
clouds of bees, millions on millions of
them, along the whole length of the
crevice. The ordinary drowsy hum of
a hive is here intensified to a deep,
solemn roar, distinctly audible a mile
below.
TO go honey gathering there on
summer day might be perilous bust
ness. We have always made our raids
on the nest during the cold weather,
generally on some chilly day toward
Christmas when the the bees are lying
torpid and winter silence has fallen
upon this whole vast apiary.
1t was one Of I'll e last days of Novem-
Der, and whc Il we started that morning
the weather was quite warm, almost
"muggy," with thin, blush fog rising
from the prairie, which had lately been
burned over and lay coal black under
foot.
But we had not gone more than eight
or ten miles when "norther" came
down on us in full blast. The first we
saw of it was a sudden whirliug of the
fog over the top of belt of mesquits
to our left. Then came a puff of cold
air as damp and chilling as when in sum-
mer one steps into a cellar.
A minute later, this monitory Whit
was followed by a second puff, perfect
gust, which set our hats whirling, and
upset the hogsheads Of the spring
board.
The norther was upon us!
When the norther struck us, We set
out to 60 back home; but, as the canon
was now no very great distance ahead,
we drove on and got into that at place
about two miles below the great bees
nest.
The cliffs here broke the force Of the
gale, and selecting q spot where 9 big
mex Of drift stuff had been lodged
against the rocks by foods, We built .