It is of the utmost importance to have as your chief packer a man who thoroughly understands how to take care of the animals.  It is not the custom in Mexico, as it is everywhere in Australia, to wash the backs of the animals as soon as the packs or saddles are taken off—­a precaution which is very beneficial, as it strengthens the skin and prevents inflammation and sores.  In the Southwest they do not wash their beasts of burden until the mischief is done and they have to allay the swelling and heal up the cuts.  If not properly cared for from the beginning, the animals will soon be ailing; some grow unfit for service, and much time is lost mornings and evenings curing their sores.  Through the carelessness of some packers I lost several valuable mules from such wounds.  In summer the blue-bottle fly aggravates the annoyance, as it lays its eggs in the open spaces of the skin, and maggots develop in a very short time.  Of course there are many ways of ridding an animal of this pest, but here, as everywhere, the proverbial ounce of prevention is better than the pound of cure.

A curious case of a man whose life was threatened by a blue-bottle fly and its maggots came to nay notice.  He was a soldier, and once in a fight he had his nose cut off so that the nostrils became entirely exposed.  One night when he was asleep, drunk, a fly laid its eggs in his nose, and when these were hatched it seemed as if the man was to be eaten up alive.  I gave him some relief by syringing the parts with a solution of corrosive sublimate.  Then an intelligent Mexican, who had an extensive knowledge of the numberless native medicinal plants (many of which, no doubt, are very valuable), treated the patient, and in two days the poor wretch seemed to be in a fair way to be saved.

Near Granados I heard of some petroglyphs, or rock-carvings, and sent Mr. Stephen to examine them.  The Mexicans called them “Painted Face.”  They were to be found only two miles and a half to the northwest of the town, and were interesting.  The designs were rudely pecked on the moderately smooth felsite cliffs on a nearly perpendicular wall in the foot-hills, about forty feet above the bed of the arroyo, or gulch.  All the human figures were drawn in the characteristic style that we find farther north, the hands and feet being defined with three radiating lines, like a bird’s track.  The size of the figure, carved in something like a frame, is about twenty by twenty-four inches, and each of the three figures in the group close below is about eighteen inches high.  Some of the drawings evidently represent the deified dragon-fly found almost everywhere among the ruins of Arizona and Northern Mexico.  There are also the concentric circles, the conventionalised spiral, and the meander design, so common among the North American Indians, and still in use among the Moquis.