—Mrs. C. L. Whiton.

Our stay was comparatively not as long as our talk in sandy San Luis, for we soon left its pastures behind and were steaming southward, but with slower and slower speed. Again we were twisting our toilsome way up the valley’s “purple rim,” since it was easier to go over the high bank than down through the rugged cañon, where the wagon-road runs. The summit of this ridge, beyond which lies the valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, is not attained until you reach Barranca (“a high river-bank”), sixty-five miles from Antonito, and one of the most attractive spots in the region. The altitude is over eight thousand feet, and the air of that perfect purity extolled in all that is written of mountain districts. The station, with its half dozen accompanying houses, all owned and occupied by those in the service of the railway, stands in the midst of acres of sunflowers, which all summer long spread their yellow disks to the full gaze of the sun, and dare him to outshine them. I have seen sunflowers before, but never in such masses and splendor of tone as here. Near by one catches sight of the green of the leaves and stems between, like the mottled plumage of some canaries, while the mass of chrome-yellow atop is picked off with maroon dots of seed-centers. Distance loses these details to one’s eye, and gives only a billowy stretch—a glorious sulphur sea, intense as burnished gold, rolling between you and a dark green shore of piñon foliage. This August landscape, indeed, divides into three great portions, relieved by few variations, yet never for a moment monotonous. In the foreground are the brilliant, owl-eyed flowers; above them the stratum of well-rounded tree-tops, blackish in shadow; after that the far-away mountains, delicately green, or deep blue, or washed with an amethystine tint. Arching over all bends the cloudless azure of the canopy.

Our cars safely side-tracked, the Madame and I wander aimlessly about during the warm afternoon, while the Musician takes his rifle and saunters away down the tapering track, and Photographer and Artist set resolutely off for a tramp to the top of some buttes. Returning in good time for our twilight dinner, the rifleman brings no game, but reports having seen a cotton-tailed hare and some ravens. The climbers come in very weary. Their buttes were far away and lofty. From their summits they could distinguish Fernandez de Taos, and are not surprised to learn that more freight is gradually being transferred thence from here than from Embudo, the designated station for Taos. They could see more grand peaks than they could count on their fingers and toes; and told us about the road to Ojo Caliente, the Warm Springs of New Mexico, famous for almost three centuries.

This was an objective point twelve miles away; but the stages which now run, had not then begun their daily mail-trips, so we had to dispatch a messenger for a vehicle. Three Mexicans lay stretched out on the station-platform asleep. They had lain there all day waiting in lazy patience the coming of the pay-car which owed them a few dollars. For uno peso—one dollar—one of them consented to take a message to Antonio Joseph, who owns the springs; and, mounting his burro, scampered off with an appearance of tremendous haste, which doubtless diminished as soon as he had placed the first thicket behind him.

The Madame and I took our chairs into the shadow of the dining-car, and read and sewed while the sun sank reluctantly down. It was very quiet, the humming of wild bees and wasps furnishing almost the only sound. Soon I noticed that between our glances a mound of earth had been thrown up about a dozen feet from where we sat. A moment later there was a stirring in the nearest clump of sunflowers, some soil was tossed up, immediately followed by a brown nose and shaggy little head, which instantly disappeared, only to come up again, pushing before it a handful of dirt from its tunnel. This was repeated a dozen times or more, at the end of which the little workman came on top and surveyed his surroundings. He saw us, but as we kept still he took no alarm, and presently let himself down backwards into his burrow. He was not gone “for good,” however. In a moment the blunt, stiff-whiskered snout and black eyes peered out, and made a grasp at a stem of the sunflower. It was large and tough, and the first bite only made it tremble; but a second nipped it off. Then seizing it by the butt,—he was wise enough not to drag it leaves foremost,—he pulled it down into his hole, and apparently carried it to the innermost chamber, for some minutes elapsed before he returned for a second flower stem, to add to his winter stock.

We knew him well enough. He was the gopher, a large kind of ground squirrel, not easily to be distinguished from a prairie-dog in race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If any one desires to know more about him, let him “look up the authorities,” as Professor Polycarp P. Pillicamp would say.

That evening we sat in the parlor-car, or rather lay easily on the couch-like chairs reclined to their utmost limit, and listened to the Musician’s violin, while the glorious banners of the retreating day paled slowly from view. Opera, sonata, opera-bouffe, ballad, came tenderly to our ears and floated away out over the sun-flowers and into the piñons, where the few birds awoke to listen; and perhaps were wafted out to the rolling plain, whence at intervals came faintly in reply the long, yelping howl of a coyote.

In the morning we were awakened with the announcement that our conveyance was ready. It had come at midnight, and proved to be only an ordinary farm-wagon, with springs under the seats. The road wound through the clustered trees and crossed open glades, as though in a nobleman’s park; passed the rocky buttes, whose jutting cliffs were strangely picturesque in their Grecian morning-robe of angular shadows, and descended a long, stony hill to the mesa, which thereafter it traversed for ten miles. This mesa was a great table-land of sand. Whence it had drifted was widely discussed; but the more I think about it, the less I believe it had drifted at all, and the more I incline to the opinion that it remained, while a great amount of formerly overlying earth and partial rock, unprotected by the thick capping of lava shielding the larger part of the surface, had been swept away by water. There were plenty of gauges to help to a judgment upon the extent of this denudation. To the right, a long mesa, with steep sides, extended out like a promontory, whose level basaltic surface was a thousand feet above us; yet that was a valley long ago, for the lava took it as a channel. Behind, across the Chama, the Jemez mountains lifted themselves in rugged outline against the southern sky. They are volcanic; but, almost as high as they, towered the flat-topped, butte-like mountain of Abiquiu, which is not volcanic, but of sandstone, and stands as a mark of the former level of the country there, on the day when the hot basalt came hissing down from its fiery spout now lost to our tracing. On this dry, sandy, cactus-loving upland grew the rich grama-grass, another name for it being panic-grass. It has a seed-head which is neither panicle nor spike, but a perfect little one-sided brown feather, about an inch long, hanging stiffly at right angles to the stalk, and at its very summit. It is not only odd, but very beautiful, for the grass grows thinly, and every plumelet is visible.

Our progress was slow and monotonous; we had exhausted our conversation and were getting tired of everything, when the driver pointed out a red hill to the right as our destination, and presently, descending a steep bench, we turned up the valley of Ojo Caliente, whose former banks, like those of all these southern streams, were from one to five miles apart, and very precipitous. Between these the river wound its way, crossing from side to side of the valley, or pursuing the safe “middle course.” In the bends of the stream were Mexican farms and the most dilapidated of adobe houses, some part of nearly every one of which had so fallen to pieces as to be uninhabitable. Our guide said the land was poor, and we believed him. Everything showed that the people were poverty-stricken and almost in barbarism, yet they had an abundance of land, pretty well watered, and great flocks of sheep and goats; we met a single flock which probably contained fifteen hundred sheep. Some of the dwellings had wooden gratings in place of windows; and the doors, made with auger and axe, had been rudely carved in an attempt at decoration, which time, smoothing and tinting, had rendered very attractive to our unaccustomed and curious eyes. Behind the best houses often would lie an unfenced bit of old orchard, grown almost wild. Such a half-ruined plazita, with its carved doors and grated windows; with its corner of goat-corral, and conical ovens at the side; its grassy roof, and high, gnarled trees overhead; its background of river-bend and cornfield and red rocks and distant misty mountains most of all, with its foreign humanity peering out to see who was passing, made a picture which threw our art-devotees into ecstacy; and as each was passed they declared they would sketch it—when they came back! That the declaration was kept you have evidence, though modified into a general view of Ojo Caliente.

Four miles up from the bend the springs were reached, and we gladly sat down to a dinner beginning with Baltimore oysters. These springs are hot, but endurably so, after one has tempered up to it. They flow from under the cliff on the eastern bank, and are thence led into the bath-houses close by. Excepting the hotel, which will accommodate from fifty to seventy-five guests, the only other building is a large supply-store; but you will usually find a great many people living in tents near by. These warm springs are noted for their curative and healing qualities, and have been visited for many years by invalids, with miraculous results. They do tell some wonderful stories of relief given to rheumatic and paralytic patients; while diseases of the skin vamos at once, as a Mexican attendant phrased it. Such an effect is to be expected, when you find heated water analyzing into the following constituency:

The fact that the latitude (36° 20´) and inland situation give a mild, equable climate in winter, and the altitude (6,000 feet) makes the summer air sweet and invigorating, should be taken into account, however, in estimating the conditions that promote the speedy gains of health recorded.

That these springs have been resorted to from remote antiquity, is shown by the ledges above, which are covered with very ancient, almost obliterated, ruins of those cliff dwelling aborigines whose houses and pueblos are scattered in such profusion over the cañons tributary to the Rio Colorado and the lower Rio San Juan. We heard that many skeletons and relics had been found there by casual excavating, and so went up to try our luck. We could trace not only the bounds of several closely grouped pueblos, but in many cases even the estufas and the straight walls of the separate rooms. A little shoveling at once showed us that these were made outwardly of uncut stone, and inwardly of adobe, which resisted the pick, while the loose earth within was easily removed. We could only “coyote round,” as a western man calls desultory digging, but saw how rich a treasure to the archæologist would be exposed by systematic excavations. In searching for the stone metates and las manas, which then as now constituted the corn-crushing apparatus of the common people, the Mexican peasants have disclosed many ancestral bones, and we kicked about parts of human skeletons lying bleached, on the surface, at half a dozen places. At last, by chance, we struck a skeleton ourselves. It was that of a young person, for the wisdom teeth had not yet risen above their bone sockets, and the sutures of the skull were open. The bones were disordered, so that we obtained only a few, and the head had been crushed in. The same rude dismemberment and lack of burial is said to characterize all the skeletons discovered, and they are always found within the walls of the houses. The local theory is, that an earthquake overtook the town; but I believe that the pueblo was attacked and captured by enemies during the wars which we know finally resulted in the village-people being driven out of all this region, and that it was burned over the heads of the citizens, many of whom were killed within their very homes. The presence of charcoal all through the mounds of ruins, with various other circumstances, confirms this reasonable explanation.

We noticed fragments of pottery scattered everywhere. Some whole jars have been exhumed, I was told. Such ancient ware, uninjured, would be of priceless value, but probably it all fell into unappreciative hands, who despised its rudeness in comparison with the smoother modern ware. The samples we secured showed a close similarity to all the broken pottery strewn about the ancient and impressive ruins in the Mancos and other cañons of the San Juan valley, and, like them, had preserved their colors in the most wonderfully brilliant way. Flakes of obsidian (volcanic glass, which the settlers usually call topaz, or Mexican topaz) were very common, and I picked up one large core, whence scales had been chipped. They used this excellent material for their arrow-points and spear-heads, and we bought and were given a score or more of very fine specimens of such obsidian points, but found none except some broken ones, during our hurried look. We were told that a javelin-head of this material, over a foot in length and exquisitely worked, had been dug up here by a fortunate prospector for relics, and that he had refused fifty dollars for it.

Opposite the hotel and springs was a poor little Mexican hamlet called also Ojo Caliente, where an odd old church invited inspection. But between us and it

“There’s one wide river to cross,”

—and the bridge gone. What then? The Artist, the Photographer, the Musician, “all with one accord began to make excuse.” It was left for the only remaining male member of the party to make the effort, nor did he propose to wade; but how? The whole circle shrugged their contented shoulders and answered, “Quien sabe!”

Down in front of the hotel stood a cross-eyed Mexican with a vicious-looking black burro. Yes, he would let the Señor Americano take him, but he could not go with the Señor, because of the rheumatism in his knees, for which he had come over to the waters. So the “Señor” marched down to the post to which the burro was connected by a small rope looped about his neck. The untying of that rope was the scene for an action, Señor vs. donkey. The sarcastic remark of the Musician, “Now you have met your match!” was scarcely heard. It was not the Señor’s vocation to chase that black burro around the yard, but he made it so without hesitation for a few minutes, devoting himself with the utmost diligence to the duty. The extreme levity of the idle spectators showed how utterly unable they were to appreciate a really good piece of burro-chasing when they saw it. Finally the course of the work brought the operators in close proximity to an old locust tree that had not cumbered the ground in vain with its useless trunk, as it had seemed to do for years past, The Señor skillfully put the donkey on the other side, and dexterously wound his end of the line around the sturdy trunk, whereupon the burro, like grandfather’s clock, “stopped short.” So would the adventure have done, had not the Mexican brought his squint to bear upon the scene, and, after a calculating survey, hobbled rheumatically to the Señor’s assistance. Clasping both arms enthusiastically about the donkey’s thick neck, he made signs for the cable to be cast off and the Señor to mount.

The saddle consisted of a pair of wishbone-shaped wooden crotches, fastened together on each side by a cross-bar at their lower extremities. The whole was then covered with raw-hide, which by its shrinking made the affair solid, while a cinch of the same material secured it to the little beast’s back. A sheepskin was spread underneath, in lieu of a blanket, and wooden stirrups dangled by rude straps at the sides. It was a matter of agility to get into this primitive saddle, and the stay was likely to prove extremely brief, for the moment the Mexican let go his loving embrace, the burro ducked his head and made off in a swift, short circle, which came near disposing of the Señor at a tangent, through centrifugal force. Resisting this philosophical demonstration by locking his legs together around the burro’s body, he finally overcame the circular intention by pounding the brute’s head on one side, for there was no bridle and bit with which to guide him. The lookers on averred afterwards that it was as good as watching a yacht turn the lightship, to see the rolling skill with which the Señor veered away toward the gate, stumbled across the stony bottom, and dashed into the swift river. He himself remembers the devout thankfulness with which he found himself unwet on the other side, and the terror with which he discovered that his animal had broken into a gallop that threatened to dislocate every rib and rattle down his vertebræ, as a child tumbles over a pile of letter-blocks. What could he do? If it seemed almost impossible to stay on, it was altogether so to get off. There was no halter on which to pull, no mane to grasp, and frenzied whoas only urged that wicked donkey faster. But a happy thought came. He had heard a fruit-seller at Conejos say chee! chee! to his burros. Whether they stopped or went faster, after it, he couldn’t remember, but it was worth trying. Chee! chee! chee! burst from his frantic lips. Instantly the beast came to a standstill, almost impaling his rider on the sharp pommel. It was a success, and his anatomy was safe again. After that, control was easier. A dig of the heel in his ribs made the burro go; a bang on the side of his head steered him away from the wrong direction, and a blow on the other side taught him he had diverged too far from the middle course, while chee! chee! stopped him altogether. So with trepidation and shying in a corn-field, and perilous climbing of steep rocks, at last the hamlet was reached, and the labor of dismounting painfully accomplished.

“No tengo llave—allí!” and disappeared in the cave-like darkness of her windowless dwelling. Meanwhile the man had gone on, sublimely indifferent to the Señor’s cries and beckoning, and when followed, was found in the midst of his half-naked family, greedily devouring a melon, which he had opened by dashing it to pieces on the stone door-sill, and was now gouging out with his knuckle. After he had quite finished this pleasing operation, he got the keys of the church, and, accompanied by a little girl, led the way to the sacred edifice, whose outer court, surrounded by a mud wall a dozen feet high, was secured with a padlock.

The church itself of course was built of adobe, the façade being supported on the right of the door by a great sloping buttress, which was not only a brace, but had served in place of a ladder to those who built the roof and parapets. At each corner, in front, a little protuberance hinted that the architect had side-towers in his mind, while the center was carried up into a low gable, surmounted by a square bit of clay work and timber, bearing a wooden cross and sustaining a homemade bell, whose greenish and rough-cast exterior gave it an appearance of the most corroded antiquity. Recent rains had evidently damaged the walls very much, for great hollows had been washed in them.

Unlocking the axe-hewn and wooden-pinned doors, always innocent of paint, the Señor and the Mexican uncovered their heads, and the little girl at once knelt down, crossing her hands on her breast. Unlike the old sister who exhibits the ancient chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Santa Fe, and never leaves her knees during the whole visit, however, this pious young maiden sprang up in a minute and trotted round, as full of curiosity for the white stranger as he was for la yglesia.

This poor church was more forlorn than most of its fellows. The clay floor had lately been a pool of water, and its drainage had ploughed deep furrows and left soft holes. The little round box of a pulpit, painted in streaks of red and blue, had replaced its lost stairway with a ladder, and its sounding-board was a spoon-shaped piece of plank about the size of a chair-seat, inside which was traced a white dove on a blue ground, its wings outspread in full conventionality. Nothing so good as a draw shave had ever worked out the supports of the altar-rail, behind which the floor was planked. The altar itself bore in the center an image of the Virgin Mary, about half life size, dressed much like a great doll. On each side of her were tall tallow candles, set in rough holders whittled out of billets of wood into a rounded pillar form; and all about the altar were small sconces stamped out of tin (generally devoid of mirror), and cheap prints, colored and uncolored, of the Savior wearing the crown of thorns, Madonnas, and other sacred subjects.

The altar-cloth was calico, trimmed with frills and flounces of cotton lace and red muslin, more or less ragged and dirty. On either side of the altar, facing each other, hung crosses bearing wooden figures of Christ crucified. These also were about half life size, and were naked, except that one had a piece of cotton twisted about the loins, and the other had a short skirt of dirty tarletan, suggesting the ballet. These effigies were painted a dull white, and hung in the most agonizing attitudes,—suffering intensified by the long-drawn lines of the haggard faces, the slant of the eyes, and the dropping of the lower jaw. To produce a more horrible representation still, the carver had given the forms extreme emaciation, the ribs standing apart, the abdomen sunken, the bones and cords of all the limbs dreadfully prominent. Add to this cadaverous appearance a network of red streaks tracing the principal veins, and great splashes and runlets of blood, and you have an image awful beyond conception. Besides these large models, there was a little one of the same style, which I should have been tempted to have sacrilegiously stolen, had not the keeper been watching me closely; and in several niches, small, tinsel-clothed puppets, which the man told me were San Francisco, Patron of the Church, and our Lady of Guadalupe, who heads the list of sanctified virgins in all the Mexican churches. Standing in these little holes in the half-whitewashed wall of mud, under their ragged little curtains, the corporal’s guard of saints looked very forlorn; and I do not wonder the peasants refuse to go into the building after dark, no matter how fast they may mumble their prayers.

More interesting than the images were some silken and fringed banners, decayed almost to shreds, and the spear-points of their staves well-rusted, which once belonged to the Spanish soldiery; for this church is one of the oldest in the new world. Centuries have rolled over its adobe walls, and its roof of closely-set logs and adze-carved brackets, has echoed to the clank of men in armor, as well as to the chant of half-Indian farmers and shepherds. It is rude and ugly and barbaric, representing a phase of Christianity in some respects far worse than the simple religion those Indians over at the Pueblos thought good, a thousand years ago. But the little church is not to be despised, and the awe-struck faith of its miracle-loving parishioners may be more acceptable than the gilded worship of many a rich and learned congregation nearer the sea.

VIII
EL MEXICANO Y EL PUEBLOANO.

Then they descended and passed through the luxuriant yellow plains, the sunset blazing on the rows of willows and on the square farm-houses with their gaudy picture over the arched gateway, while always in the background rose the dark masses of the mountains, solemn and distant, beyond the golden glow of the fields.—William Black.

Home just in time from Ojo Caliente, we hooked our cars the same evening to the never-tiring express, and trusted ourselves to its guidance without a thought of danger. When daylight had fully come, and from the “purple-blazoned gateway of the morn” the sun was begging entrance at our curtained windows, somebody—I think it was the Photographer, a man utterly without nervousness or regard for it in others—startled all our tranquil slumbers by the shout, “Comanche!”

It was not Indians though—only a respectable sort of cañon, with great black walls, and rugged hills wedged apart by the stream, and the train hanging invisibly half-way betwixt top and bottom, always going in and out of nooks and gulches, always gliding down nearer the water, until finally, between strange farm-fields, the noble Rio Grande came in view, and once more we ran upon a level track. Emerging from Comanche Cañon, a bend to the southward is made along the western bank of the lower part of the cañon of the Rio Grande. In many portions of this narrow valley, only about twenty miles in length, features of great interest to the eye occur, equaling the walls of Comanche, which was itself ignored until the railway brought it to light. The river here is about sixty yards wide, and pours with a swift current troubled by innumerable fallen rocks. To-day it is swollen and yellow with the drift of late rains, but in clear weather its waters are bright and blue, for it has not yet soiled its color with the fine silt which will thicken it between Texas and Mexico.

On the opposite bank, near the level of the river, runs the wagon road that General Edward Hatch, formerly commander of the department of New Mexico, cut some years ago to give ready communication between his headquarters at Santa Fe and the posts in the northern part of the Territory and in southern Colorado. This is the track now followed by all teamsters, but the old road from the south to Taos ran over the hills far to the eastward, passing through Picuris.

An odd conical hill (shown in our engraving) stands near the mouth of the cañon, dividing the current of the river. Noticing its resemblance to a funnel, the Mexicans called it Embudo, and the adjacent station takes the same name. Embudo is chiefly important as the point of departure for Taos, thirty miles distant.

While breakfast was preparing we were interrupted by the sudden apparition at the side-door of our car of two long ears, then a forehead, bulging by reason of the bushy hair that covered it, and immediately afterward the neck and shoulders of a donkey. But if you say donkey down here few comprehend you. The proper word is burro (boó-ro). This animal bore upon his round back a small saw-buck saddle, from each side of which hung a square panier of wicker-work. These paniers were not nailed, but the willow sticks of which they were made were bound into place by thongs of rawhide. On top, between them, was lashed a third square basket, which would hold a half-bushel. Though this seemed very bulky, it really was a light load for the little beast, and he stepped along briskly ahead of the wrinkled old Mexican who owned him. Shining through the wicker receptacles we saw green rinds, and sang out,—

“Melones?”

“Si, Señor,” came the husky answer, whereupon the burro was seized by the tail and brought very willingly to anchor. Slipping several of the sticks out of their leather-loops, half a dozen long yellow specimens, something between a melon and a cantaloupe, were held up for our inspection. We hammered them with our knuckles, testing their soundness, and finding some to suit, enquired the cost,—

“Cuanto pide vm. por estos melones?”

“Dos realles!” (two shillings) was the reply; so we bought three at an outlay of seventy-five cents.

They proved muskmelonish and somewhat tough, but by no means bad. There seems to be no reason why much better melons should not be raised, since the conditions are favorable and every farmer does more or less at it. This question why served to spice our chat at luncheon. It was ultimately concluded that the continued degeneracy was due to the fact that all the good ones were stolen and eaten, only the very poorest being left to mature their seeds; thus the worst, instead of the best, were used to propagate from. I recite this, to show the thoughtful reader that we are not always frivolous, but often introduce grave themes into our discourse, and discuss them in a philosophic way.

Attaching ourselves to the locomotive of a working train, after the noon repast, we were hauled down the valley three miles, and given an opportunity to watch the men repair track that had been lately torn to pieces by water, two or three culverts having been swept out and the road-bed completely uprooted. The hills at that point slanted down to the river in a long treeless sweep, sown so thickly with boulders of basalt, from the size of a bushel to that of a barrel, that even the sagebrush could find scanty footing between. Down this long slope, from the mountains behind, had come one of those raging precipitations of unmeasured rain to which the West has given the expressive name “cloudburst.” Truly, when one of these incidents of Rocky Mountain meteorology occurs, “the windows of heaven are opened.” To such a torrent the natural rip-rap opposed a very slight obstacle. The heavy and closely packed rocks were lifted and rolled and hurled headlong as though they had been a child’s marbles. Wherever any earth or mere gravel was met, it was plowed up and dashed away in a moment, while as for the railway bed, its embankments were demolished, its cuttings filled, and such heaps of stones piled upon its distorted track in some places that no attempt was made to dig it out, but new rails were laid in a different spot. They were rough and irregular enough, but we went safely over. Against these cloudbursts no railway in this region can provide; and there is nothing to be done but rebuild as quickly as possible. The skill, energy and marvelous speed with which the section men do this, and the character of the temporary track over which they run their trains until a better one can be constructed, excite the surprise of every one. Railroading in the West is as unlike the similar pursuit in the Atlantic States as a Colorado silver shaft is a contrast to a commonplace granite quarry.

We had observed on the further side of the river, where the flat lands were continually widening between the stream and the hills, signs of Mexican habitancy, and at the washout discovered a chapel of the Society of the Penitentes, into which the flood had broken a great gap near the foundation. It was a rude little house of mud, but well plastered within, and perhaps had been intended as a dwelling in former days. Creeping in through the breach, we found no furniture, but a pile of a dozen or more wooden crosses, which had been carried there by the doers of penance at Easter. The smallest of these crosses was more than ten feet in height, and its beams at least six inches in diameter. As to the heaviest, I doubt if I could have lifted it fairly from the ground. Yet the poor sinners had managed to get them across their shoulders, and so had dragged them hither, with many pains of outward penance and fearful flagellations of conscience, but with rich reward of pride before earthly eyes, and promises of glory in the world to come. From where they had been brought, or by whom, there was no record; but their ends were worn diagonally to a sharp wedge by long scraping over the stony soil. In addition to these were several small crosses of lath, which had been borne by the priests, typically; some tin and wooden candle holders, curious little lanterns, and one of those rude religious portraits on woods, which are so common throughout this section, and which are preserved reverently among the Mexicans for generations.

The Penitentes are a sect within the Church, which the priests are said to have been discouraging. Perhaps this has had some effect, for the custom is in decay, a result due more to the railway than to the cathedral, I fancy. During the greater part of the year the Penitentes sin and are sinned against like other people, but in the spring they atone for it by wearing coarse clothes under a sort of sacrificial robe, and by torturing and starving themselves nearly to death. Walking in processions, masked beyond recognition, enduring constant castigations from each other, bearing over the roughest roads and across country the heavy crosses we have seen, and with the “pride that apes humility” enduring the utmost suffering, they consider themselves to have laid in a stock of grace sufficient to over-balance all possible crime during the coming twelvemonth. The practice has a long history, but amounts to an American survival of the Flagellants of Europe.

A few miles below, the Mexican farms and orchards became more frequent, the little settlement of Joya was noticed, Plaza Alcalde passed by, and the wide, fertile plain of San Juan opened to our view. Skirting the western edge of this (for the river keeps close under the high bluffs on that side), we ran five or six miles, until a triangular parting in the bank opened to the westward, where we halted on a side-track near the old adobe village, but new railway station, of Chamita. The Rio Chama flows into the Rio Grande here, and a broad valley area is the result. The whole of this, which is easily irrigated, is under tillage, and just now looking its best. It is therefore a green and prosperous landscape we gaze upon, bounded by reddish benches which the setting sun brightens into splendor, and shut in by blue, lofty, cloud-capped hills, beyond which stand the guardian summits of snowy ranges.

Up the Rio Chama cultivation extends almost uninterruptedly for many miles, and there are several villages or plazas. Chamita itself is on this side—a cluster of scattered houses along the bluff through which the railway has made a deep cut. The top of this ridge commands a fine view up and down the Rio Grande, and there idle figures of Mexican or Indian are always to be seen watching for the train or studying the movements of almost invisible people on the other side of the valley. Draped in black, for the most part, motionless and immovable, they remind one irresistibly of Poe’s picture:—

This point, as I have intimated, is in the midst of the civilization of northern New Mexico. Twenty-five miles up the Chama stands the large town of Abiquiu, an important place in old times; nearer by another plaza, Cuchillo, is a farming center. Not far away, in the Rio Grande valley, are San Juan, Santa Cruz and Española, the latter on the western bank of the river and the present terminus of the railway line southward, whence stages depart regularly for Santa Fe.

A Mexican farmhouse or “ranch” looks like a small fort, and makes a very pleasing picture, as you may observe in our sketch. It is square, rarely more than one story high, is built of mud, and roofed with immense round rafters, the ends of which protrude irregularly beyond the wall, because the builders have been too indolent to saw them off. Over these rafters,—above the line of which the wall extends a few inches,—are laid some boards or a stratum of poles, and upon these dry earth is spread a foot or more deep, with rude gutters arranged to carry away the water. In the course of two or three seasons, such a roof will have caught a supply of wind-sown seeds, and support a plentiful crop of grass and weeds, which is no disadvantage. This novel result is interfered with somewhat, however, by the habit of using the roofs of the houses (reached by a short ladder) as a place for drying fruit and sunning grain, and for a general lounging spot, whence a better view of what is occurring in the world,—the going and coming of the neighbors, the planting or gathering of the crops, the approach of a stranger-horseman, or the movements of the cattle on the benches,—can be obtained, than a seat on the ground affords. As the train dashes by, the passenger notices two or three women and children standing on each housetop, shading their eyes with their brown hands, and making an unconscious pose irresistibly alluring to an artist.

On a line with the front of the house a wall will probably extend a little distance in each direction, and then backward, enclosing a garden and diminutive orchard. Everything is square. The idea of a curve seems rarely to enter the Spanish-Indian mind. For graphic effect, this is highly gratifying, since the bends in the river, the rounded outlines of the mountains, the undulations of foliage, are all in curves, to which the angular lines of the buildings present a most pleasing contrast. Now and then you will see a better house—one whitewashed outside, and having a balcony running around the second story. The outbuildings, in any case, are only a few mud huts, used for storage, and some rough pens where the animals are kept. Anything like the barns of an Eastern farmer is unknown.

The isolated dwelling, however, is largely a modern innovation. The general plan is to live in compact, block-like villages, surrounded by a wall, or what amounts to that. This results partly from the need in early days of united protection against the Indians, but chiefly from following the traditional custom of their red ancestors; for the New Mexican of to-day is a half-breed, or a mongrel of some degree between the Spaniard who “came over with the conqueror” and the Indian of whatever tribe happened to be accessible. Remote from civilized influences, the common people have tended always toward barbarous ways, and are more Indian than Spanish, albeit the dialect they speak is not so far removed from the Castilian as one would expect. There are local differences and idioms, of course, which are at once noticeable; but the usual tongue is not very bad Spanish.

Though Mexican hamlets and farms are scattered everywhere about here, in the fertile valleys, there is a class of towns along this part of the valley of the Rio Grande which are primarily Indian, and situated upon reservations each ten miles square, secured to them by the government. Each of these present villages, now commonly known by a Spanish name, was the site of an ancient native pueblo, and the fields which were deeded to them by the United States are those their fathers cultivated before the white men appeared at all. Some, however, yet retain their Indian names, as Taos, Picuris, Pecos, Pojuaque, Acoma and Tesúque. San Juan, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and others have been given new names by the conquerors and priests. South and west of Santa Fe lie many other pueblos, some of them very populous, as Jemez, Zia, Santo Domingo, and San Felipe. In all of them substantially the same sort of life is found, and as it is impossible for me to cover the wide territory they embrace, the reader must be content with the type of the whole to be seen here at Pueblo San Juan. It is a phase of humanity and conduct rapidly passing away—melting under the steady sun of modern progress; and the traveler who does not take an early opportunity to study it will miss not only that which is extremely interesting and suggestive, but what in a few years will become a matter of history and romantic tradition.

Here at Chamita the river is divided by a large, flat island into two branches, each perhaps a hundred yards in width. Over the first one, at the time of our visit, stood a good bridge, built by the railway company; a second bridge had spanned the other branch until the high water carried it away. Formerly there had been a ferry, but the boat was out of order, and nobody cared to repair it, for could not the stream be forded?

The large island was gravelly and liable to be inundated, so that it was given over to the pasturage of sheep, goats, cattle, horses and donkeys. On the eastern bank we found ourselves at once in the midst of grain fields and garden plats. Tall Indian corn alternated with short wheat, hay and alfalfa, or patches of potatoes, melons and vegetables. Fences were few, but the road was defined by a line of upright brush, bound into cohesion by withes of bark, so that it resembled a thoroughly dead hedge. Here and there stood a casa chiquita, but the main town was on the bluff marking the old bank of the river, half a mile from its present current.

Pueblo in Spanish simply means “a village.” When the first explorers, Cabeça de Vaca, Coronado and the early lieutenants and friars whom Cortez sent northward, in search more of gold than geography, penetrated what is now New Mexico and Arizona, they everywhere found Indians more or less nomadic, but the larger part of the natives belonging to a different class, and living in settled communities of permanent houses. To these the Spaniards naturally gave the name of “village,” or “pueblo” Indians, which, by a common process of lingual change, has become shortened into Pueblos, though Puebloans is a far better word. Their own tribal names have disappeared except in a few cases, such as the Zuñis and the Moquis, and the Spanish word covers all Village Indians distinguished from the roving Apaches, Mojaves and Utes, that surround them and centuries ago wrested from them much of their former territory. At present there are in all New Mexico but nineteen towns of the Village Indians, whose aggregate population in 1880 was only 10,469, as follows:

Ascending the high bank along a road greatly gullied by the rains, we found ourselves in a large group of houses, each of which was joined to its neighbor as continuously as in a city block, but only one story high; or if there was a second story, it did not come out flush with the front wall, but was ten or fifteen feet back, the roof of the lower story serving as a portico to the upper floor, which was reached by an outside ladder.

These dwellings were built of mud bricks, called adobes, and in many cases the floors were lower than the level of the street—a matter of small concern, since the door-sill was so high as to shut out any water which might be running outside. Mixing in a little broken straw, rough blocks about twice the size of ordinary bricks are moulded, dried somewhat in the sun, and laid up in the form of a wall. Space is left for a door and some small holes for windows, quite high up. That is about all there seems to be of it, yet the inexpert find it not so easy to build a “doby” as they supposed. The consistency of the clay must be right, and I am told the wall must be laid so that the blocks somewhat brace each other by beveled sides, or else the great weight which rests on the top, otherwise wholly unsupported, will cause the middle of the wall to bulge. That these ancient houses stand so plumb and uncracked shows how proficient the Indians are at this peculiar architecture; and ought they not to be, for did not they invent it?

All the buildings are smoothly plastered outside and in. This is done some weeks after they are built, and after they have thoroughly dried. To obtain the necessary material for the outer “stucco” coat, the floor of the interior of the unfinished house is dug up and mixed with water until it becomes a soft paste. Then it is taken by the handful, dashed against the unchinked adobes, and spread smoothly with the palms, just as a town mason would use a trowel. The women do all this, and I remember surprising three damsels, as pretty as the New Mexican peasantry have to show, down on their knees and up to their elbows in seal-brown mud, plastering the new house, while father and mother were busy in the fields.

Most of the Indian dwellings,—and they are as good as the majority of the abodes of the Mexican ranchmen,—have two rooms, and sometimes three, but these are generally so dark that the eye must accustom itself to the gloom before their contents can well be discerned. This arises from the scarcity and diminutive size of the windows. Here in San Juan, indeed, I saw roughly sashed windows in many houses, or else a single pane of glass set in; but often only a grating is used to guard the aperture, or else holes in the walls are left so small that no enemy could crawl through. You can imagine the darkness inside, therefore, even on a bright day. Originally the pueblo was common property, and both men and women assisted in building it, but new ideas of individual possessions are invading the old notions. It was the former custom, too, to mix ashes with earth and charcoal into a substitute for mortar; yet, as we shall see later, the very ancient, ruined buildings of the ancestors of these Puebloans show an architecture in stone, with a cement now as hard, or even more tenacious, than the blocks it binds together. “They take great pride,” says an old book “in their, to them, magnificent structures, averring that as fortresses they have ever proved impregnable. To wall out black barbarism was what the Pueblos wanted; under these conditions time was giving them civilization.”

Entering one of the houses here in San Juan, we shall find the floor is only of earth, but that many skins are spread about. In one corner, or else beside the entrance door, will be one of the queer little round-topped fireplaces prevalent all over Spanish America; but if in the latter place, a low wall or wing of masonry runs out into the room, protecting the fire from contrary drafts. The cooking in summer is done out of doors almost wholly; but in cold weather, when utilizing these fireplaces, they use the iron pots and skillets which civilization has brought them, eking out with variously shaped earthen utensils of their own make, and baskets obtained from Apache and Navajo visitors.

You must expect to see very little furniture in an Indian’s house, though occasionally some familiar objects are found. The beds are made on the floor, and consist entirely of skins and blankets. The walls are often whitewashed, and though they never heard of Eastlake, they always make a dado of clay water. The soft brown tint contrasts well with the white frieze, and would be attractive in itself; but the clay here is full of specks of mica, which dust the walls with gleaming points not to be spurned in mural decoration.

The Indians admire pictures, but are not scrupulous as to artistic superiority. In nearly every house you will find a board a few inches square, upon which is painted a religious subject, usually in red and yellow, of some saint, or a group of them. Such pictures, and others whenever they can get them, are highly valued and will be adorned with peacock feathers and bright berries.

They love gay colors and choose them in their dress, which is a singular mixture of Indian, Mexican and American. There go a man and woman ahead of us who are fair types. Neither are of large size, and though an oddity of gait comes from their habit of walking with their toes straight before them, both are of erect carriage. The man is dressed in brown flannel shirt, hanging blouse-like about him, tightly fitted leggings of buckskin, with a broad seam-flap in place of fringe on the outside of each leg, and moccasins. Over his right shoulder and under his left arm is loosely draped a striped blanket made by the Navajo or Apache Indians of the interior, and diligently repaired in its worn places. His head is bare, under the blaze of the hot sun, save for a wreath of cottonwood leaves. Under this “bay crown” his smoothly-brushed and jet black hair, accurately parted in the middle along a line of red or yellow ochre, is plaited on either side into two long braids, intertwined and lengthened out with strips of red flannel and tufts of otter-skin.

The woman wears a long, loose tunic of coarse cloth, almost devoid of sleeves, and belted at the waist; but sometimes this is of buckskin, Her extremities are not clad in leggings, but encased in short, shapeless boots having a moccasin foot, and stiff legs, which reach nearly to her knees, and often afford the only recognizable distinction between a male or a female, who, to a stranger’s eye, are confusingly alike. She wears thrown over her head a shawl-like expanse of common pink-printed calico; but if you could see her hair you would discover that none of the attention had been bestowed upon it which her husband’s has received; it has been cut short, particularly across the forehead, and is likely to be tangled and dirty. In this respect these Rio Grande Indians have fallen from grace into the slovenliness of their nomadic neighbors. The maidens of the purer Moqui pueblos, for example, take great care of their raven locks. Parting the hair at the back of the head, they roll it around hoops, when it is fastened in two high bunches, one on each side, a single feather being sometimes placed in the center. The Moqui wives gather it into two tight knots at the side, or one at the back of the head; and the men cut their hair in front of the ears and in a line with the eyebrows, while at the back it is plaited or gathered into a single bunch and tied with a band.