The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1916-04-27

~ a country of eternal sunlight,
of great stretches made DESC
late by sand and the white crust Of
alkali; a land of prairie dogs, Looping
jack rabbits, lonely hawks circling in
a cloudless sky. This is northern Mex
leo, where an American army went in
pursuit of Villa
The state of Chihuahua and its west
ern neighbor, Sonora. have been Vii
las stamping ground. They are the
two largest states in Mexico, although
Sonora had only 221,6S2 inhabitants
FIVE years ago and chihuahua 27,SOO.
Between the states, and tapping over
into BOTH lie the Sierra Madre noun
tains on whose wooded slopes, dark
with pines, bears, black and grizzly,
mountain lions and leopards abound.
1t is a high-lying country. Four
ffths of Chihuahua Is table land 1000
to 5000 feet above the sea. Snow falls
in winter time in the mountains, and
rivers that are valleys full Of dry
stones most of the year become rush
ing torrents after a storm.
But the rivers are few and the
stretches of arid country very great
Always in northern Mexico you have
the impression of vastness, and the
sharptoothed hills against the blue
sky, the naked hills, washed in the
sunlight of a thousand years, add, to
the bigness and the loneliness and the
desolation of it all. There is little life
apparent. Here and there cattle Craze,
for cattle and mining are the life. OF
this country. Sometimes you pass
where a ragged Mexican in sombrero
and serape herds flock of goats Lit
tie dusty, sun-baked settlements of
low adobe houses huddle beside the
railroad track at far intervals in the
desert.
Land Of Mirage.
The dust is choking often; white, al
kali dust that gets into your throat and
eyes, burns, blinds and chokes. The
illusion of lakes is not uncommon In
the shimmering heat; they seem to lie.
broad and shallow in the sun, and
with tall, feathery trees around their
rims. Neither lakes nor trees are
there. This is northern Chihuahua,
along the line of the Mexican Central
railroad.
Sonora, a wilder country, has only
one real line of railway, a division OF
the Southern Pacific which runs down
to Guaymas.
Chihuahua is a country Of mines
: and great cattle ranches. Sonora is
even richer in minerals, and has been
since Spanish days. 1t furnished the
gold of Montezuma, and afterward
many q jealous padre built churches
with the gold of the Sonora hills. Hid
den in the hills lie many fertile val
leys, and irrigation has produced rich
crops; but farming is not one of the
great industries of Sonora.
Half-wild cattle roam the Chihuahus
plains; the great haciendas count theil
acres by the hundreds of thousands.
1t is easy to understand why caval
ry had to form large part of the ex
peditionary force against Villa. This
is a country of horsemen; Villas fol
lowers have lived on horseback. Va
queros, they are. many of them, Mexi
can cowboys; and when they became
fighters it was natural that they should
become troopers rather than infantry
men.
Much of the arid country is admira
bly, adapted for horseback going; 1t Ii
hard packed, sandy soil.
Cities Are Few.
Cities of size are few; the most i'm
portant Of these is Chihuahua, capita
of the state of the same name. There
is Juarez, Of course, the sordid, monde
script and squalid town across from
El Paso, where gambling, bull fighting
and all forms of iniQuity are accus
toned to run without much curb. Ther
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