If there is one thing in which the Mexicans can outdo us more than another it is in stage or diligence driving, and this too with animals that will not compare with ours in size or strength, although, in proportion to their size, probably more enduring. They generally make up in numbers what they lack in strength, for they hitch them in troops and droves, so to speak. When we first started we had two groups of four and two leaders; then we changed to four abreast and two wheelers; then, as the country grew a little rougher, they hitched two leaders to the six, making eight altogether. Now, again, we dropped to six mules in pairs, as we see them at home. As the last stretch was a tough one, we again had ten mules in sets of fours with two wheelers. This over a very rough mountain road. Here was versatility in mule driving that I never expected to see among a people that are generally reported by most American writers to be of a decidedly non-versatile character. When the Mexican mules are through staging they "skirmish" for a living, grazing off such grass as can be had, or in lieu thereof browsing on cottonwood and willow bush, not even disdaining a corner of a corral or a wagon tongue or two if times are going a little hard with them. Late in the afternoon we realized that we were entering the foothills of the mountains, for the road wound through many picturesque little ravines and ascended the rocky beds of the small creeks, often taking to the middle of the stream when the cañon was very narrow or thickly strewn with bowlders. It was quite a common occurrence for the stage to be overturned on the road--if road it could be called--and the most decided talent in mule driving was necessary to guide the groups of little animals safely between the mossy rocks. Toward evening the walls of the long cañon, with its broken craigs and fantastic turrets, almost met overhead, so narrow was it; but after a few turns and twists it widened, and after rounding the peak of a high mountain, entered another cañon, where, strung out its whole length, was the town of Cusihuiriachic. I do not intend to throw the name of this Mexican town at my readers without giving a plan, section, and elevation of it as a key to the riddle. We were now in the land of the Tarahumari Indians of West Central Chihuahua, this long-winded name applying to them just as equivalent Indian names are found in Maine and a few other places in the Union. This large Indian tribe, probably numbering from 15,000 to 18,000 (the most authentic estimate I can get places them at 16,000, although I have heard them estimated at 30,000 in strength), was once scattered over a considerable territory, and their names are still given to most of the places in the country they occupied before the advent of Europeans. [Illustration: IN CUSIHUIRIACHIC CAÑON.]