AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1 9 6 6 double issue - Desert Magazine of ...

them off with a little fresh water after
they're cooked, but we ate them straight
from the sea water and they were fine.
This is a good thing to know about when
you're short on drinking water and camped
near a sea. And, I must say this for
Sam. He's a man of rigid principle and
not easily convinced, but after tasting
our salt water noodles, he threatened to
write a cookbook and steal that one from
me!
The trip through unmapped country
between our previous camp and El Barnl
was not without incident. During the
whole time of criss-crossing from wash to
wash to break a trail, we didn't see so
much as a trace of a track left by any previous
vehicle, although we did find an
abandoned rancho in good condition.
It was a funny thing about this place.
A ramada and an acient frame house sat
on a low hill overlooking an immense
rock-walled corral. J. W. Black, who has
accompanied Uncle Erie on a number of
26 / Desert Magazine / August-September, 1 966
expeditions into Baja back-country, remarked
that the corners of this corral were
sharply squared, rather than rounded, a
characteristic typical of those built by the
prolific Villavicencio family who has
owned ranches in Baja as far back as history
is recorded. But the fact that no
road nor trail led into the region puzzled
us, until Ynez, our Yaqui guide, observed
that it wasn't a permanent ranch, but one
used only for round-ups when there's
enough rainfall in the area to pasture
cattle.
Then later, back home, I ran onto
another interesting bit of information.
While trying to locate the lost Padre
Golfo Camino, a trail through this area
which had been broken, but soon abandoned
in favor of the inland mission trail,
adventurer Arthur North, over half-acentury
ago, wrote about meeting a
rancher whose name was Fidel
Villavicencio. This Mexican gentleman
was involved in a mining venture with
the Englishman Dick Daggett, whose
son is a resident of Bahia de los Angeles
today. The Mexican spoke excellent English,
having been educated in the United
States, and North commented further
upon the superb workmanship apparent in
his gear, especially complimenting his saddle
and shoes. (We were shortly to make
a similar comment about the gear of a
descendant!)
The neatly constructed stockyards
and vastness of the spread indicated far
more than just a temporary abode and a
verdant patch of green gave evidence of a
spring in the rugged mountain behind the
ranch.
At the beginning of this break-through
into virgin desert, we'd found occasional
rows of desert-varnished rocks lining the
edge of what Arthur North, traveling by
mule, referred to as remnants of the lost
Padre Golfo Camino, but now there was
nothing to indicate the land had ever
been traversed—even by coyotes. One bad
spot, where we came close to giving up,
sliced so sharply down into a deep wash
that the men worked for several hours alternately
shoveling and rebuilding the
bank into a grade. For this country, trucks
should be hinged in the middle so they'd
bend !
But even country like this is "home" to
the Mexican vaquero. We heard a whoop
from Uncle Erie and the caravan halted.
At the front of the line, Uncle Erie was
embracing an old friend.
Lorenzo Villavicencio isn't a man you'd
be likely to forget. About six-foot-four, he
looks like all opera stars ought to look.
Broad-chested, independent and devastatingly
masculine, he's a true vaquero. He
and his companeros dismounted from
their mules, removed the packs from their
burros to rest the animals, and then joined
us for lunch. Enroute to do a little business
at a ranch in the north, they were
seeking a short cut through this region
from their ranches at El Barril.
Erie Stanley Gardner first met the
Villavicencio family when he was gathering
material for the Hidden Heart of Bajn
and in that book he wrote a great deal
about them. Their height, for one thing,
intrigued him. Some of these brothers
are almost seven feet tall! Later, on this
Opposite: On the beach at San Francis-
(jii'ito Bay we collected bleached shark
bones which looked like intricately carved
ivory. Left: When two vaqueros meet,
they speak the same language, even when
it's expressed in a foreign tongue. Here
Sam Hicks visits with Lorenzo Villavicencio.