34           GOLD MINES OF THE PECOS AND THE GILA.
value. His listeners laughed at him at first, but then he was so earnest; and furnished so many corroborative proofs of the truth of what he asserted, that they could not avoid being impressed.
In answer to the taunt that all is not gold that glitters, that base metals are constantly mistaken for it, he showed them a small piece of the virgin metal which he had preserved through all the vicissitudes of his escape and life since, as confirmation of his truth. There was no mistake about the genuineness of this specimen, and then he went on to give details which were so peculiar and consistent, that scarcely a room for doubt of his absolute truth remained. At all events, they produced such an effect upon those roving men, that they agreed to accompany him in an attempt to reach this mysterious place.
Wooldridge was one of the first to propose the undertaking, for there was just about enough of vagueness and hair-breadth adventure in it to attract him.
Wooldridge could give no very definite account of the route proposed, and I knew too little at the time about the geography of Texas to be able even now to indicate it exactly, though I have very good reason to believe that it was nearly the same I afterwards attempted myself. The adventurer said that it was far in the direction towards Santa Fe, among the mountains near the headsprings of the Pecos or Puerco. He said the party consisted of •twelve men, under the guidance of the returned Comanche prisoner. They were all Cow-boys, and badly armed—many of them with no other weapons than a rifle and a knife—and trusted entirely to game for subsistence. I remember well that it was for the valley of Red River that they struck, and after following that for a week or two, they crossed a great desert, as he said, so dry, that their tongues were hanging out of their mouths with thirst, before they got across.
There they reached a river, which, from the direction and the description he gave of it, I am convinced must have been the Canadian ; the south fork of which they followed far towards its sources, and then had another dry passage of several weeks' thirsty suffering, till they must have struck the northern head streams of the Red River.   Here they must have  crossed the