We rode with a great clatter up the single street lying white and still in the noonday sun, and had we not known that preparations had been made for us--as our arrival was anticipated by Don Augustin Becerra--we might have mistaken the place for a deserted village. After riding a mile through the street we reached a little plaza about twenty-five feet square, where the mountains receded and made room for this level little patch of ground. Here one of the great wooden doors of the apparently deserted houses opened and our host came forth, followed by a number of others. By the time the whole party reached the plaza there were one or two hundred Mexicans congregated to welcome us and see us alight. As there were no accommodations of any sort in the town for travelers, Don Augustin Becerra, with the graceful courtesy of a Mexican gentleman, had moved out of his own home and literally placed his whole house and all it contained at our disposal; and this was done as though it were the most commonplace thing in the world, and without the least sign of ostentatious politeness. I doubt very much whether any American under the same circumstances would have done as much. His father, Don Buenaventura Becerra, lived here also, and both united in showering on us the most acceptable acts of hospitality during our whole stay; and these were doubly welcome, coming as they did in such a spontaneous and wholly unexpected manner. [Illustration: THE ONLY STREET OF URIQUE.] Urique is most interesting in that vast and substantial mineral wealth of which the little town is practically the center. The discovery of the rich district of Urique is to be attributed, so I am told, to the "adelantados" or "conquistadores," Spanish names equivalent to "adventurers," and then given to the commanders of expeditions organized but a short time after the conquest to explore the country and extend the domains of the Spanish crown. Directly overlooking this beautiful little mountain town is the Rosario mine, one of the principal mines of the district. Its ore runs from two hundred to two thousand dollars to the ton. In fact only the richest ores of any mine can be worked in the Central Sierra Madres, where everything is carried for hundreds of miles on mule-back at rates that would make a freight agent's mouth water. Salt for chlorination works, that we get for five to ten dollars a ton where there are railways, here costs from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton, and even much more during the rainy season of about three months, when all the streams are swollen and the dizzy mountain trails are dangerous in the extreme. This rainy season in Northern Mexico lasts from about the first or middle of June until the middle of September. It is against such enormous odds that man has to battle with Nature in this secluded part of the earth in order to get at her wealth that is otherwise so lavishly strewn around. After one has passed ten or