arsenic. But perhaps the worst at short range are produced by bullets made from the fibre of the aloe root, which are almost always fatal, since it is impossible to clear the wound.

"On reaching the fort and seeing the commandant, I was told by that officer that he could not take the responsibility of weakening his force, and that the most he could do would be to give me an escort back to the Santa Rita. As the troops from Fort Breckenridge were expected in a few days I was led to expect that after their arrival I might obtain a small number of soldiers. But when, after several days had passed without bringing these troops, the commandant told me that not only would it be impossible to give us any protection at the Santa Rita, but that he could no longer give me an escort thither, I resolved to return immediately with only the boy Juan. In the meantime a rumor reached the fort that a large body of Apaches had passed through the Santa Rita Valley, and probably massacred our people, and were preparing to attack Tubac. I was certainly never under a stronger temptation than I felt then to accept the warmly pressed invitation of the officers to leave the country with the military, and give up all idea of returning to what they represented as certain death. But I felt constrained to go back, and Juan and myself mounted our horses. I had hardly bid the officers good-bye when an old frontiersman, Mr. Robert Ward, joined us, and declared his intention of trying to reach his wife, who was in Tubac. As we left the fort a fine pointer belonging to the commandant followed us, and as

he had become attached to me, we had no difficulty and few scruples in enticing him away to swell our party. We took the hill trail, it being both shorter and safer, and had reached a point within three miles of the Santa Rita without meeting any fresh signs of Indians, when the dog, which kept always on the trail ahead of us, after disappearing in the brush by an arroyo, came back growling and with his tail between his legs. We were then two or three hundred yards from the thicket, and spurring our horses, we left the trail and quickly crossed the arroyo a hundred yards or more above the ambush, for such the fresh Indian tracks in the dry creek had shown it to be.

"We reached our mines safely, and found that although almost constantly surrounded by Apaches, who had cut off all communication with Tubac, there had been no direct attack. Our entire Mexican force was well armed with breachloading rifles, a fact which, while it kept off the Indians, rendered it necessary that our guard over our peons should never cease for an instant. Nor did we once during the long weeks that followed, place ourselves in a position to be caught at a disadvantage. Under penalty of death no Mexican was allowed to pass certain limits, and in turn our party of four kept an unceasing guard, while our revolvers day and night were never out of our hands.

66 We had now to cut wood for charcoal and haul it in, stick by stick, not having enough animals to draw the six-horse wagons. This and burning the charcoal kept us nearly three weeks before we could begin to smelt. Our furnaces

stood in the open air about one hundred yards from the main house, and on a tongue of high land at the junction of two ravines. The brilliant light illuminating every object near the furnace exposed the workmen every night, and all night, to the aim of the Apache. In order to obtain timely notice of the approach of the Indians, we picketed our watch dogs at points within a hundred yards of the works; and these faithful guards, which the enemy never succeeded in killing, more than once saved us from a general massacre. The whole Mexican force slept on their arms around the furnace, taking turns at working, sleeping and patrolling, receiving rations of diluted alcohol, sufficient to increase their courage without making them drunk.

"More than one attempt was made by the Apaches to attack us, but being always discovered in time, and failing to surprise us, they contented themselves with firing into the force at the furnace from a distance. In the condition

to which we all, and especially myself, had been brought by weeks of sleepless anxiety, nothing could sound more awful than the sudden discharge of a volley of rifles, accompanied by unearthly yells, that at times broke in upon the silence of the night. Before daylight one morning, our chief smelterman was shot while tending the furnace; it then became necessary for me to perform this duty myself, uninterruptedly, till I could teach the art to one of the Americans and a Mexican.

"I foresaw that the greatest danger from the Mexicans was to be anticipated when the silver

should be refined, and made arrangements to concentrate this work into the last two or three days, and leave the mine immediately after it was finished.

"Dispatching a messenger, who succeeded in reaching Tubac, I engaged a number of wagons and men, and on their arrival, everything that could be spared was loaded and sent off. The train was attacked and the mules stolen, but the owner and men escaped, and bringing fresh animals, succeeded in carrying the property to Tubac.

"At last, the result of six weeks' smelting lay before me in a pile of lead planches containing the silver, and there only remained the separating of these metals to be gone through with. During this process, which I was obliged to conduct myself, and which lasted some fifty or sixty hours, I scarcely closed my eyes, and the three other Americans, revolver in hand, kept an unceasing guard over the Mexicans, whose manner showed plainly their thoughts. Before the silver was cool, we loaded it. We had the remaining property of the company, even to the wooden machine for working the blast, in the returned wagons, and were on the way to Tubac, which we reached the same day, the 15th of June. Here, while the last wagon was being unloaded, a rifle was accidentally discharged, and the ball passing through my hair above the ear, deafened me for the whole afternoon.

"Thus ended my experience of eight months of mining operations in an Apache stronghold.' As one of the results of the withdrawal of the troops from the Territory, the following, taken

from J. Ross Browne's "Adventures in the Apache Country" gives a vivid description of the desolation of the country around Tubac and also of one of the fights had with the Indians by the settlers:

"Three years ago (about 1858) this beautiful valley, (the Santa Cruz) was well settled by an enterprising set of frontiersmen as far up as the Calabasas ranch, fifteen miles beyond Tubac. At the breaking out of the rebellion, when the Overland Stage Line was withdrawn, the whole Territory as stated in a previous chapter, went to ruin with a rapidity almost unparalleled. The Apaches, supposing they had created a panic among the whites, became more bold and vigorous in their forays than ever. Ranch after

ranch was desolated by fire, robbery and murder. No white man's life was secure beyond Tucson; and even there the few inhabitants lived in a state of terror.

"I saw on the road between San Xavier and Tubac, a distance of forty miles, almost as many graves of the white men murdered by the Apaches within the last few years. Literally the roadside was marked with the burial places of these unfortunate settlers. There is not now a single living soul to enliven the solitude. All is silent and deathlike; yet strangely calm and beautiful in its desolation. Here were fields with torn down fences; houses burned or racked to pieces by violence, the walls cast about in heaps over the once pleasant homes; everywhere ruin, grim and ghastly with associations of sudden death. I have rarely travelled through a country more richly favored, yet more depress