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Show CHAPTER IX. THE DEAD OF THE DESERT. I was privileged last evening to be the guest of Don Estaban Guiteras and his charming family, and when it was time to renew the expression of my appreciation of his hospitality and bid him good night, I deeply re gretted that Mexican etiquette forbade me to prolong my visit. Don Estaban is now in the evening of a life largely spent in deserts and mountains, and it is allotted to few men to pass through his experiences and retain a fair measure of health, or indeed, to survive. Wind-tanned and sun- scorched, he is a rugged example of in domitable courage and of unshaken determination, to whom good luck and success came when despair was rid ing on his shadow. I questioned him of the desert, the mountains, the can yons, and never was boy preparing for his first commu nion more familiar with his catechism than was Don Es taban with the gruesome wonders of the lonely places of the peninsula. He told me of a region where many men had died of thirst, and to which flocks of ducks and water fowl came year after year in the migratory season ; of places where rain is almost unknown, yet where clouds come of a night and, breaking on some lofty peak, hurl thousands of tons of water upon the land, altering the forms and shapes of mountains, - ploughing deep gorges here, and there fill ing others with great boulders, and changing the face of the country. He spoke of deserts where men go mad with heat, throw their canteen, half- filled with life- saving |