This was his whole outfit for a winter campaign in the Sierra Madre.

They are hardy people, these Indians! This man told me that he was thirty years old; his "senora," he said, was twenty-five; when he married her she was fifteen, and now they had eleven children.
Finally I succeeded in securing two guides.

One of them was a very intelligent man, who had been several times in the sierra; the other one had been only as far as Chuhuichupa, and, although he did not remember the way very well, still he thought that with the help of the other man he would be able to make out the route.

As we could do no better, we had to take him as the best guide available.
After having received some supplementary provisions from Granados, I at last, on December 2, 1890, began the ascent.

It was a beautiful day; the air was clear and warm and the sun shone bright, as it always does at this time of the year in this favoured region.