For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any prominent change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the heat and dust and brush-walled road.  But about the middle of the afternoon we reached the summit of the longest hill, from which we saw ahead of us a cut up country, wild and rugged and beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our feet.  We heard the faint murmur of running water.  Hot, dusty, wet with sweat, and thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast as we dared.  Our horses did not need urging.  At the bottom we plunged into a swift stream of clear, cold water—­granite water—­to drink of which, and to bathe hot heads and burning feet, was a joy only known to the weary traveler of the desert.  Romer yelled that the water was like that at our home in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank till I thought he would burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him from wallowing in it.

Here we entered a pine forest.  Heat and dust stayed with us, and the aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay behind.  Every mile grew shadier, clearer, cooler.

Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several miles, as was often his wont.  The drink of water stirred him to an Homeric recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the end of which, almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon such a stream as the one we had just passed.  Then he told me about his trips down the west coast of Sonora, along the Gulf, where he traveled at night, at low tide, so that by daytime his footprints would be washed out.  This was the land of the Seri Indians.  Undoubtedly these Indians were cannibals.  I had read considerable about them, much of which ridiculed the rumors of their cannibalistic traits.  This of course had been of exceeding interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land of the Seris.  But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data concerning them.  Professor Bailey of the University of California told me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found the Seris to be the lowest order of savages he knew of.  He was positive that under favorable circumstances they would practice cannibalism.  Nielsen made four trips down there.  He claimed the Seris were an ugly tribe.  In winter they lived on Tiburon Island, off which boats anchored on occasions, and crews and fishermen and adventurers went ashore to barter with the Indians.  These travelers did not see the worst of the Seris.  In summer they range up the mainland, and they go naked.  They do not want gold discovered down there.  They will fight prospectors.  They use arrows and attack at dawn.  Also they poison the water-holes.