chasm to the only hot springs in the range, guarded by a few scraggly fan palms. Beyond, our road veered out into the desert, traversed the sandy washes emitting from Canyons Carrizo and Verenda, and finally turned up the broad gateway to Canon Parral.
We car camped two miles below roads-end at Rancho Parral, on a sandy bench next to the road. Almost directly south of camp was a distinct break in the canyon wall-"Gunsight Notch", according to Bud, our gateway to the fabled Matomi.
Next morning we hoisted packs and headed toward the notch in the skyline. Our route took us across a desert garden dense with cholla. Anyone who does much hiking in the Baja desert comes quickly to respect cholla. This ornery little cactus is coated with needle-sharp spikes that penetrate the skin with remarkable ease. Some hikers who have encountered cholla too intimately insist the needles lurch at their victims. What's more, the spikes have minute hooks at their tips which allow them to resist removal with amazing stubbornness. We gave the pain-inflicting little plants a wide berth.
The sun was unusually warm for a January morning as we toiled slowly onward toward the gap in the ridgeline. We picked up, then lost, a faint trail that wound among the cactus and boulders, higher, ever higher. A final steep lunge brought us to Gunsight Notch. A quick survey southward revealed that we had another desert valley and a second, slightly lower notch to climb over before reaching Canon Matomi.
Two hours later we stood at the second pass, on the very threshold of Matomi. A breathtaking panorama opened before us. Ahead and below, about three miles away, was the great abyss. Looking westward, we could see where Matomi emerges from the confinement of the mountains to become a broad, steep-walled valley. From here eastward to the Gulf of Calif. it is known as Arroyo Matomi. Cutting a path down the middle of this wide basin is a shallow canyon, crowded with literally thousands of blue fan palms, nourished by a small watercourse. As a grand backdrop, the 2,000 foot banded cliffs rising to Matomi Mesa glimmered under a thin layer of snow. Pico Matomi, ever elusive, remained out of sight beyond the mesa.
We cautiously picked our way down the rough trail into the bowels of the canyon. Our faint pathway descended a rock-bound gully, rounded a spur and reached an isolated growth of palms fed by a trickling stream- "The Oasis", Bernhard said. A quarter-mile farther south we stood on the brink of the inner arroyo.
The contrast was startling. From arid desert we abruptly dropped into a watery Garden of Eden, verdant with streamside grasses and succulents and shadowed by a canopy of Erythea armata --the Mexican blue fan palm.
Immediately across the palm arroyo, on a sandy bench just above the stream, we noticed to our surprise a rather well-built dwelling of adobe and wood. Approaching the house, we were greeted by a gaunt, leathery-skinned man about sixty years of age. He introduced himself as Tomas Castro-Dowling, rancher of Ejido Aliso. (An ejido is a collective farm unique to Mexico, a product of their revolution.) Dowling, whose grandfather was an English mining engineer, makes his living herding cattle in Matomi Canyon and raising vegetables. He leads a lonely existence, the sole human being whose permanent habitat is the great canyon of Matomi.
Others lived here. Obsidian arrowheads and other small artifacts are scattered throughout the canyon, a sign that Indians once inhabited the area. The Indians were probably Kiliwas, once the proud dwellers of the San Pedro Martir, who the Spanish padres were never quite able to bring into their fold. It is interesting to note that obsidian should be found this far south of the border. The only major source of obsidian in the Southwest is Glass Mountain in the Owens Valley. Obviously, trading among the native peoples was extensive and wide-ranging.
 
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