sight of the railway, the Mormon settlements of Manassa and Ephraim have
been founded, and have now a population of about six hundred. These
people do not practice polygamy, and are frugal, industrious and
prosperous. They are under the jurisdiction of the church in Utah, which
also maintains similar colonies in the corners of Arizona and New Mexico
adjacent to the Utah and Colorado line.
VII
THE INVASION OF NEW MEXICO.
There are mists like vapor of incense burning.
That are rolling away under skies that are fair;
There are brown-faced sunflowers dreamily turning.
Shaking their yellow hair.
--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.
[Illustration: SIERRA BLANCA.]
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:
Sodium Carbonate 196.95
Lithium " .21
Calcium " 4.17
Magnesium " 2.18
Iron " 10.12
Potassium Sulphate 5.17
Sodium Chloride 38.03
Silicic Acid 2.10
------
Total 272.52
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.
[Illustration: OJO CALIENTE.]
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.
[Illustration: EMBUDO, RIO GRANDE VALLEY.]
In the door of one of the low mud houses sat a woman, nearly hidden
under the usual black shawl, which she had now drawn down over her
swarthy face. The Señor advanced and doffed his hat. You are a Spanish
scholar, yet perhaps would not have understood as well as that peasant
woman, had you seen or heard the conversation.
"Waynass deeass, Seenyora," began the tourist.
"Buenas dias," came faintly out of a fold in the mantilla.
"Yocayrolaverolaeglahssay," was the Señor's next parrot-like remark,
evidently understood by his veiled listener, for, pointing to a little
man slouching past, she answered:
"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.