The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-27

by the way, it is in the same country
that the celebrated Shafter mine, the
only profitable silver mine in Texas, is
located. This mine was discovered by
General Shafter of Santiago fame, who
made one of the earliest journeys
through the Great Bend territory, and
since then it has yielded him a good
sized fortune. 1t was there, to the west
of the Pecos river, that he sought the
Apaches and Comanches and cleared
them out-whence his sobriquet of Pc
cos Bill Across the great bend of the
river is Comanche pass, through which
the Comanche Indians used to make
their raids into Northern Mexico.
The canyons of the Rio Grande are
series of gigantic roof1ess tunnels carved
by the river through range after range
of mountains. Between the ranges are
dry plains called 'bolsons''--a Spanish
word signifying purses or inclosed ba-
sins-and these are the most dismal
and horrible deserts imaginable, such
vegetation as they have being of
weird and abnormal description On
the mountains, likewise, nothing grows
except cacti of 1000 different varieties
and spiky shrubs of forbidding APP
pearance and the streams that flow
down their sides are lost in the burning
sands below.
er's paradise. There are plenty of deer
and turkeys, as well as the ''yow-yow'
and many other kinds of cats. The
''yow-yow,' so pronounced, is spelled
jaguar in Spanish, but few Americans
know how to call properly it's name,
which is a phonetic rendering of the
animals cry. Included in the minor
fauna of the Great Bend region are
myriads of pouched gophers, kangaroo
rats and pocket mice; also a great va
riety of queer reptiles, such as horned
toads, horned rattlesnakes and desert
lizards. Some of the lizards are good
to eat, while others can run faster than
a horse, and others yet live on flowers.
so that one can get big bouquet by
cutting one of them open.
Notwithstanding the arid character
of the country, there is plenty of food
for all these animals. The cactus fruits
are nourishing and so are the seeds of
the prickly pear, while the mesquite
beans are extremely nutritious and
other desert plants yield subsistence in
one form or another. The 1oftier noun
tains, too bear pine forests on their
tops, which produce edible nuts. One
naturally thinks Of the timber line"
on a mountain as marking a zone,
reached in going upward, where trees
cease to grow; but in this strange re-
gion it is only on the mountain tops
that timber is found, the slopes being
devoid of tree growth. When the Mexi-
can boundary was surveyed the par
ties engaged in the work could not get
into the canyon country with their
wagons and outfit, and were obliged to
make a detour around it. 1t is a do
main full of myth and legend, as might
be expected from it's photographic Pc
culiartties.
In places the canyons have perpendic-
N ha h,,il
with exquisite regularity of natural
masonry, which rather resembles the
work of ant than of nature. AS the Rio
Grande goes around Mount Emory-the
loftiest elevation in that part of the
world, with an altitude of 5000 feet-it
makes its deepest cutting. a channel
fully 1000 feet in depth. Think of the
length of time, doubtless running up
into thousands of centuries, that must
have been required for the stream to
eat it's way downward through nearly
mile and quarter of solid rock,
Seen from the canyons edge the river
is mere thread and the roar of it's
rapids and falls is scarcely audible.
1t is supposed that Cabeza De Vaca,
who was the first white man to cross
the present territory of the United
States from Atlantic to Pacific, went
through the Great Bend country. He
had with him three companions, one of
Wnom was negro, and the party had
no food supplies except what nature
afforded and the Indians gave them.
Starting from Florida in June, 1927.
they did not see a white person until
April, 1536-nearly nine years-when
they reached Sinaloa in Mexico, and
there came across an outpost of the
CorteZ invasion.
The Great Bend country, save in
some of it's parts, is very little known
to-day, no thorough exploration of it
having ever been made. 1t is a region
of lost mountains, as they might be
termed, as we'll as of lost rivers. Some
hundreds of miles to the northward the
chain of the Rockies loses it's continuity
and thence in a southwark direction
the mountains are scattered in isolated
ranges and peaks, forming no homo
geneous system. Some of them are
domes like sugar loaves, others are
block-shaped mesas, and others yet,
when seen in groups from a distance,
look like the spires of distant cities.
The Pecos and the Rio Grande are the
only streams in all that territory that
reach the ocean eventually.
Here and there occur springs, though
rarely. and in their neighborhood cat
tie ranches are found. In the dol
sons" between the ranges, hopeless des-
erts though they are, water may be
got by digging deep for it. The bolsons
are basins filled with debris from the
mountains and water is usually held in
their bottoms, if the dry and porous
strata above be pierced through 1t is
one of the oldest freaks of that domain
of geological curiosities.
rbiIdrap,o 0lacoac hate or;on All.