The Lost Mountain

CHAPTER ONE.

IN WANT OF WATER.

"_Mira! El Cerro Perdido_!" (See! The Lost Mountain!)

The man who thus exclaims is seated in a high-peak saddle, on the back
of a small sinewy horse. Not alone, as may be deduced from his words;
instead, in company with other men on horseback, quite a score of them.
There are several wagons, too; large cumbrous vehicles, each with a team
of eight mules attached. Other mules, pack animals, form an _atajo_ or
train, which extends in a long line rearward, and back beyond this a
drove of cattle in charge of two or three drovers--these mounted, as a
matter of course.

The place is in the middle of a vast plain, one of the _llanos_ of
Sonora, near the northern frontier of this sparsely inhabited state.
And the men themselves, or most of them, are miners, as might be told by
certain peculiarities of costume, further evinced by a paraphernalia of
mining tools and machinery seen under the canvas tilts of the wagons.
There are women seen there too, with children of both sexes and every
age; for it is a complete mining establishment on the move from a
_veta_, worn out and abandoned, to one late discovered and still
unworked.

Save two of the party all are Mexicans though not of like race. Among
them may be noted every shade of complexion, from the ruddy white of the
Biscayan Spaniard to the copper-brown of the aboriginal, many being
pure-blooded Opata Indians, one of the tribes called _mansos_ (tamed).
Distinctive points of dress also, both as to quality and cut, denote
difference in rank and calling. There are miners _pur sang_--these in
the majority; teamsters who drive the wagons; _arrieros_ and _mozos_ of
the mule train; _vaqueros_ with the cattle; and several others, male and
female, whose garb and manner proclaim them household servants.