Suncho Corral is a collection of perhaps fifty adobe shacks, and its inhabitants seemed to be mostly Turks and Syrians. We paid our respects to the local _jefe_ without delay and he secured for us permission to camp on the landholding of a friend of his; the place was about a mile distant. We pitched the tents in a delightful grove on the bank of the Rio Salido. All the country is covered with a dense growth of cacti, shrubbery, and tall, thorny trees; it was unlike any we had seen before. There were a few small areas cleared of the indigenous growth and planted in corn, which thrived; water was supplied by irrigation. However, the people, who lived in widely separated huts, seemed to subsist mainly on their flocks of sheep, goats, and the limited number of cattle. There were so many dogs in the neighborhood that they were a plague. Each night numbers prowled about camp, barking, fighting, and trying to tear open bags of provisions. We did not know how to get rid of them without killing them, and this we did not wish to do; but our boy found a way. One night we heard series after series of yelps followed by frantic rushes to distant parts. Next morning we discovered that Antonio had set a dozen large, powerful “rat-killers” around the tent, baited with tempting morsels of meat. When a dog attempted to take the food it received a terrific blow across the nose--hence the yelps. We of course stopped the practice, but the dogs did not return in sufficient numbers to be troublesome. The water of the Rio Salido is brackish and unfit for drinking. There were few fish--catfish and a species of _pacu_. We had no time for angling, but occasionally saw a string caught by some villager.