should like to have spent a day with this living chronicle of olden times, but our plans did not admit of it.
Our next day's journey lay through a very romantic ravine in the mountains, along the banks of the river Sonora, which winds in a very crooked manner between two ridges. We crossed the bed no less than two hundred times in the course of the day; it is from this stream that so much gold has been extracted, the rains washing it from the mountains, which rise on each side almost perpendicularly, and depositing the small flakes of gold in the sands. No doubt great quantities might be taken out by intelligent people, as it is natural that the larger grains should bury themselves at some depth, and the natives never think of looking below a foot deep in the sand. The ridge on the left of this ravine is full of mineral veins, all of which contain more or less gold; and as gold in grains is generally discovered on or near the surface, it is very probable that in the shelves and interstices of these mountains, a large quantity of this precious metal is deposited by those tremendous periodical rains, which continue from June to September.
About two o'clock in the day we quitted this cañada, and entered upon the estate of Concepcion, the property of a Bustamante, and well watered by the river Sonora. At four o'clock we arrived at Babiacora, and went to the house of an old friend, Don Santiago Dominguez Escolasa, curate of Babiacora and Conche, and member of the State Congress. In this day's journey we passed several farms in openings in the glen, with some good mills for grinding wheat, and a few small arastres, or mills, in which the Indians separate the metal which they pick up. I observed, that what they had been working last were gold minerals.
Babiacora is a town of three thousand inhabitants, more than three-fourths of whom are Indians of the Opata tribe. There is nothing particular in the place itself, for, like all the towns in this country, it has a very large square in the centre, and a neat little church. The Opatas are the most civilized of all the Indian nations; they live in thirteen towns,[1] and are
- ↑ The population of each of these towns includes those Indians who live in huts, or small ranchos, in the vicinity, and who regularly attend on Sundays in the Plaza.
