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Show BY PATH AND TRAIL. 93 Mayo Indians, pearl fishers in the large bay of Pechil-inque. To me, the most interesting and pathetically attract ive members of the human race in North America are the melancholy remnants of the early tribes of Lower Cali fornia withering away on the desert lands and moiin-tain ranges, and now almost extinct. In the history of the human race we have no record of any tribe, clan or fam ily that had fallen so low or had approached as near as it was possible for human beings to the state of offal animals, as the wretched Cochimis, or " Digger Indians," of Lower California. The Cochimis, unlike any other family or tribe of American Indians, occupied a distinct position of their own, and, indeed, may have been a dis tinct people. Shut off from the mainland by the Gulf of Cortez to the east, and impassable deserts on the north, they were isolated, it may be, for thousands of years from all communication with other aboriginal tribes, and until the coming of the Spaniards under Otondo, they knew nothing of the existence of any other people ex cept, perhaps, the coast tribes of Sonora and Sinoloa. Their language and tribal dialects bore no affinity to those of the northern or southern nations. It is doubtful, in deed, if they were of the same race, for their customs, habits, tribal peculiarities and characteristics allied them rather to the people of the South Pacific Islands. Sir William Hunter in his chapter on the " Non- Aryan Baces," describes the Andamans, or " dog- faced man-eaters, " as a fragment of the human race which had reached the lowest depths of hopeless degradation. After the Andamans, he classed the " Leaf- wearers, " of Wissa. Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer, thought it was not pos sible for human beings to fall lower in degeneracy than |
