At the pueblo of Naqueachic of civilized Tarahumaris I found a curious method of cooking. Over the fire the food was boiling in two different dishes. One contained a substance that looked like a compound of mucilage and brick dust. The mademoiselle in charge would take up a calabash gourd full, holding a pint or two, and, although the gourd was held mouth up all the time, before it was three feet above the pot it was completely emptied, so tenacious and stringy was the substance, like the white of a soft boiled egg. This was repeated every five or ten seconds, evidently to keep it from burning. It is made from the soft, pulpy leaves or stalks of the nopal cactus; and is about as palatable to a white man as gruel and sawdust would be. The other pot contained some mixture of corn, beans, and probably one or two other more savage ingredients, a sort of Sierra Madre succotash. In one corner of the room--I might say the house, for there was only one room in the house--was a rude loom for weaving blankets, which they make from the wool of their mountain sheep, and which under all the circumstances are quite creditable. The ornamentation is not very great, and yet none of them lack this seemingly necessary part of a blanket. These blankets are usually of a dark brown color, with one or two dark yellow stripes across them at the ends. Being "all wool and a yard wide" they are quite warm, much warmer than some Mexican woolen blankets that I bought at Chihuahua, which seemed better calculated to keep the heat out on the cold nights in the mountains than to keep it in. The civilized Tarahumaris are quite cleanly for savages, noticeably more so than the lower order of Mexicans, and yet there is plenty of room, great, unswept back counties of it, for improvement in this respect. After leaving the interesting little village of Naqueachic we at once started over a high range or crest some twenty-nine hundred feet above our level, and from the top could look down in a beautiful valley on one of the most important Tarahumari villages in the Sierra Madres, the town of Sisoguichic. I would have liked to camp here for the night, but as there was no corn for the mules or grass for them to graze on we were compelled to proceed. [Illustration: OLD TARAHUMARI INDIAN.] CHAPTER VII. SOUTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA--AMONG THE CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRA MADRE RANGE. That night our camp was in an immense pine forest on the crest of one of the high peaks, and here we parted with our Mexican friend Don Augustin Becerra, to whom we had already become deeply indebted, and who found it necessary to hasten on to his father's mines at Urique, which we were to make more leisurely.