[Illustration: FROM ORANGE PLANTATION TO CUMBRA, OR CREST OF MOUNTAIN, SIX THOUSAND FEET. LOOKING BACKWARD.] One of the most dangerous places on the entire trail, about six hundred feet above the river, was where the mountain had apparently caved in on a sharp curve. This cave-in was directly under the trail, and here it crossed it with an abrupt turn around the point of the mountain. A small torrent had cut its way down at this point, and goats and other animals, when grazing on the steep slope above, had loosened quantities of stones and earth, which had fallen and built out a sort of ledge or shelf at the same point. This shelf projected over the great curve in the hill, and on approaching this place it looked as if a mule must either walk off with his fore feet or let his hind ones drop over the cliff in making the turn. Of course the trail was as narrow as possible for a trail to be and allow an animal to cling to it. Through the kindness of Don Augustin Becerra there was sent out from Urique to the orange plantation a very large mule for my personal comfort. This animal was of the pinto variety and a fine traveler. After my desperate encounters with "Old Steamboat" it was positive luxury to ride him. He had some faults, however; he was fresh and fast, so kept well in advance of the rest of the train. When we neared this particularly dangerous place my mule took up a gentle trot and went pounding around the curve in a way that almost turned my hair gray, and I know we all breathed more freely after getting away from the perilous spot. The Mexican town of Urique, numbering some three thousand people, was first established in 1612, years before the first pilgrim landed on Plymouth Rock, and yet it is as unknown as though in the interior of Africa. That living cave and cliff dwellers should be found but a little way off from the rough and even dangerous trail that leads to the secluded town which no one troubled himself to report to the world outside, shows what a wonderful isolation can exist and still be called civilization. The only way out of and into the town was on the back of the melancholy mule, and an old resident told me he believed that three-fourths of the people had never seen a wagon, not even the wooden carts of the Mexicans that so remind one of scriptural times; certainly no wagon or cart was ever hauled through the streets of Urique. In this deep barranca there is just room enough for the Urique River (a beautiful stream), and alongside of it, straggling out for a couple of miles or more, a row of houses hugging the banks of the stream, then a narrow street and a similar row of houses crowded up on the slope of the mountain. Back of this rise abruptly the steep, broken crests of the Sierra Madres. On the opposite side of the river there is only room now and then for a chance house that clings to the steep sides of the hills or burrows into them. [Illustration: URIQUE FROM THE RIVER.]