We knocked off work to prowl around the ruined fort, which, evidently, had set in the center of a much-battled battle-field. When a running schedule approximates a mile and a half an hour, a few extra minutes spent in sight-seeing do not seriously affect it. In the meantime, the rain continued and increased. Washouts and deep ravines, that we might have crossed the day before without serious difficulty, were now becoming almost impassable on account of the swashy mud. Where this mud was only a thin layer of slime over the native rock, the hillsides, which we had to climb in a zigzag fashion, were so slippery that even the sure-footed Cuban ponies we occasionally met on the trail would slide and sprawl. Between each line of hills ran a river. This would be reached by following down a tortuous pass or a winding, rough shelf on the side of a cliff. Three large rivers were forded. If ever there had been bridges, they had been burnt. Each ford meant a slow, difficult drive through water nearly two feet deep and over a treacherous bottom, partly of stone, partly of loose rock, and partly of clay or sand. Sometimes, in order to cross a river a hundred yards wide, it would be necessary to drive an irregular, oblique course an eighth of a mile long. When we could not follow the regular path up the hillside on the other side of a river, we would be compelled to take to the bare side of the hill, and go up in any possible direction to the top of the bluff, there to find a roundabout way back to the trail. Many of the mountain passes were so narrow and so furrowed with yawning gullies that we were forced to run with one wheel on a slightly sloping side wall and the other on the narrow crest of the deepest rut. This frequently compelled us to cut narrow shelves in the rock to form a solid footing for the wheels. Both going down the ravines and up the opposite ones, driving was a case of slipping around on the rut brows. Had a wheel dropped into one of these ruts, it would have meant a long, tedious job of jacking-up on a foundation of loose rocks. We must have been about a third of the way up the highest crest of the Santa Fe mountains at noon. The car had tipped sidewise to a rakish angle, with the left wheels deep in the mud, the middle of the car resting on ruts, and the right wheels in space, while the whole car was pointed upward on a stiff grade. Everything was soaked, including our box of groceries. We opened a can of sausages with a machete, they being the only food which the rain had not spoiled.