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Updated: May 21, 2025
Wetherill has lost horses on those treacherous slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the trip which is not splendid. We got over that bad place without further incident, and presently came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a narrow green split. This one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was the head of a canyon. "Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.
Dark, silent, statuesque, with inscrutable eyes uplifted, with all that was spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge of his place there, he represented the same to Shefford as a solitary figure of human life brought out the greatness of a great picture. Nonnezoshe Boco needed life, wild life, life of its millions of years and here stood the dark and silent Indian.
But by and by this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and the clumps of cotton-woods, the shelving caverns and the bulging walls these features gradually were lost, and Nonnezoshe Boco began to deepen in bare red and white stone steps, the walls sheered away from one another, breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and higher, and there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the nature that had created this rent in the earth.
The others of the party passed out of the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco in advance of Shefford, and when he reached it they were grouped upon a bank of sand. A dark-red canyon yawned before them, and through it slid the strangest river Shefford had ever seen. At first glance he imagined the strangeness consisted of the dark-red color of the water, but at the second he was not so sure.
I doubt whether his men would have followed him even if he had wished it, for he had not the dominant temper of his chief. We dropped anchor under the lee of a little island in the Boco Chico, but our engines were throbbing again by break of day. As we puffed across the North Bay we passed the schooner almost within a stone's throw.
I showed Conseil, on the map of the Mediterranean, the spot occupied by this reef. "But if you please, sir," observed Conseil, "it is like a real isthmus joining Europe to Africa." "Yes, my boy, it forms a perfect bar to the Straits of Lybia, and the soundings of Smith have proved that in former times the continents between Cape Boco and Cape Furina were joined."
Here, one by one, the mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped and stumbled along over these loose, treacherous stones. The hours passed; the toil increased; the progress diminished; one of the mustangs failed and was left. And all the while the dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified and its character changed.
If Nas Ta Bega led them safely down to the river, if Joe Lake met them at the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco, if they survived the rapids of that terrible gorge, then Shefford would have to face his soul and the meaning of this spirit that breathed on the wind.
As the Indian picked out the course and the mustangs followed his lead there was nothing for Shefford to do but take his choice between reflection that seemed predisposed toward gloom and an absorption in the beauty, color, wildness, and changing character of Nonnezoshe Boco.
It is no unusual thing for a man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I thought we had indeed reached the end of the world. "It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh. Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture.
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