the river issue from the Culebra range. About the center of the fertile
expanse lies the old Mexican town of Fernandez de Taos, with a present
population of 1,500. Two miles northeast of it, and under the shadow of
Taos mountain, stand the two great buildings known as the Pueblo de
Taos, and inhabited by about 400 Indians. Three miles south of Fernandez
lies still another Mexican village, named Ranchos de Taos, in contrast
with whose adobes the traveler finds a newly-erected flouring mill. The
middle settlement has the greatest commercial importance, and is
likewise possessed of considerable historic interest. Here was the seat
of the first civil government of the territory by the United States,
after it had been acquired as a result of the Mexican war of 1846. Here
Bent, the first governor, was killed in the revolt of the following
year, and the ruins yet remain of the old church on whose solid mud
walls the howitzers of the troops could make no impression, and from
which the band of insurgent Indians and Mexicans were only finally
dislodged by means of hand-grenades. The widow of the murdered governor
still lives in her modest adobe, and shows to visitors the hole in the
wall made by the fatal bullet. Fernandez de Taos was likewise for years
the residence of Colonel Kit Carson, and in the walled graveyard at the
edge of town his body is buried.
All this and much more is communicated the following morning by the
genial Dibble, who fills our idea of what a host should be. For twenty
years has he lived in this quiet valley, among an alien people, leaving
it only once for a trip to Santa Fe, content to preside over his
curious aggregation of rambling adobes, and make each chance guest feel
himself under paternal care.
But to us the great interest centers in the Indian carnival at the
pueblo, which is to occur on the morrow. On the last day of September of
each year the Taos Indians celebrate the festival of their patron saint,
San Geronimo (the Spanish St. Jerome), by ceremonies altogether unique,
and which few Americans have as yet witnessed. Some hours are still at
our command, in which to study the country in its every-day aspect, and
we early start out in the direction of the pueblo. Already the roads
converging toward the old stronghold show signs of the assembling
throng. Little bands of Indians, gaily blanketed and with uncovered
heads, who have walked from pueblos perhaps fifty miles away, driving
before them shaggy burros, with many-shaped packs; and Mexican
fruit-vendors, their trains of donkeys laden with well-filled wicker
baskets, form the vanguard of the unique procession. The valley across
which we pass is all under cultivation, and the ground is now covered
with the yellow stubble, while along the roadside we come upon the
regulation threshing-places.
The Pueblo de Taos consists of two great mud buildings (of the larger of
which an engraving is given) facing each other from opposite banks of a
stream, and perhaps two hundred yards apart. They rise to a height of
about fifty feet, and seem to have attained their present size by
accretions during the ages since they were founded. They are of an
irregular pyramidal form, and made up of about five stories or terraces.
Each new story is built a distance from the edge of the one immediately
beneath, so that both the length and breadth of the building diminish as
the height is increased. To enter the rooms we must ascend one of the
many ladders that lean against the wall, and then descend another ladder
through a hole in the roof. Everything was quiet and silent about this
great human wasps' nest. Nude children tumbled on the ground in the warm
rays of the sun; men strolled lazily hither and thither, their bodies
wrapped in gaudy blankets and legs encased in close-fitting sheepskin
leggings, while to their hair, black as jet and brought down in a lock
on each side, hung great bunches of zephyr or other gay material; women,
dressed in much the same manner, carried on their heads the earthen
water-jars, or large baskets of bread, which had been baked in the oval
mud ovens ranged in front of the pueblo. Everybody treated us with quiet
respect, and seemed pleased to respond to our salutations. We climbed
over one of the ancient piles, mounting to its topmost story on shaky
ladders, peering into its rooms, which we were courteously invited to
enter, and where we found sometimes as many as a dozen Indians sitting
on the floor, engaged in adding some last touches to the holiday
garments. We saw few young men, but afterwards learned that they were in
the _estufas_, or underground council-chambers, preparing for the next
day's spectacle.
To give anything like an adequate account of the festival would require
a small volume. Early on that resplendent September morning the human
tide began to pour in, till, from our position on the summit of the
north pueblo, we looked down to the plaza below on a surging mass of
fully three thousand Indians and Mexicans, in every gay and fantastic
garb. The fruit-vendors had established themselves in scores of little
stalls scattered over the plaza, and with their burros standing
patiently by, added a picturesque feature to the scene. Three hundred
mad young Mexicans, mounted on excited ponies, charged among the crowd
in a body, dared each other in feats of horsemanship, or "ran the
_gallo_" on the opposite bank. The padre from Santa Fe first held
service in the little church, after which came the event of the day. One
hundred naked and painted Indians issued in solemn march from an
_estufa_, and began the race, two by two, over the straight track a
thousand feet long. For an hour and a half they sped up and down in
front of the pueblo, amid the wildest excitement of the spectators. Then
the march of the victors, to the music of a wild chant, while bread is
showered upon them from one of the roofs of the pueblo under which they
pass, closes the morning's ceremonies.
[Illustration: PHANTOM CURVE.]
The afternoon is consumed by the antics of seven unclothed and curiously
painted clowns. For three hours do they amuse that motley crowd with
their mimic cock and bull fights, and their semblance of plowing,
threshing, and other familiar labors. As the sun nears the west, the
rabble gather about a pole, fifty feet high, over the cross-piece at
whose top has been hung a living sheep, together with garlands of fruit
and a basket of bread. After many pretended failures, the pole is
climbed, and the bread and fruit are thrown to the ground. Last of all,
the sheep, in which a spark of life still lingers, is detached, and
strikes the earth with a sickening thud. With yells and strange cries
the Indians rush in, the sheep is torn limb from limb, and with this,
the only revolting part of the entire celebration, the _fête_ ends.
The lava-caps away down the valley were glowing golden as we rode back
to Fernandez. Thought was busy with the strange events of the day.
During how many centuries had these onlooking hills witnessed the
gathering throngs of such festivals, since were laid the foundations of
those dusky piles, now bathed in sunset glory, where tradition says the
cultured hero Montezuma was born, and whence he set out on his prophetic
career? And can this ancient people long withstand the civilization that
is fast bearing down on them; or will it not soon engulf them and fill
with modern life the sacred valley?
* * * * *
On our arrival at Embudo we found the Madame in much tribulation. Not
that any harm had befallen her; but the cook, from being an assistant
after a fashion, had immediately on our departure developed into an
absolute dependent. This personage had for some time been a subject of
much solicitude and serious discussion in our family circle. We could
sympathize with his infirmities, but when they became the ever-present
shield to the most aggravated laziness, our philosophy weakened. And so,
when the Madame had explained his apparently total collapse, our
decision was speedily reached. In spite of his protestations and his
phenomenal physical improvement, we lifted him by main force on to the
first train, and shipped him northward without our blessing.
Concerning this Amos, the Madame wrote as follows to her friend, Mrs.
McAngle: "He was the 'Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance,' in our
vocabulary of nicknames. His face was a suggestion of martyrdom done in
coffee-color, for he was a darkey of uncertain and speckled hue; and his
religious possessions, a couple of books of devotion of the most
melancholy kind, kept him up to his model. Everything had been put into
our kitchen-car before leaving Denver, pell-mell; and when, at our first
evening's halt, I went out to investigate, I found Amos sitting on a
soap-box, in the midst of a chaos of utensils and packages of
provisions, almost weeping at the water-splashed confusion, without
making the least movement toward straightening matters. He brought with
him two encumbrances,--a fifteen years' experience on the Sound steamer
_Bristol_ (so he said), and his Rheumatism, with a very big R.
"He was a good enough cook when he tried to be, but wholly averse to
neatness. Becoming tired of seeing things that bore no relation to one
another on an intimate acquaintance, as the bacon and flour, for
instance, I undertook, with fear and trembling, some mild expostulation.
But I had not gone far before he raised himself to all his dignity, and
exclaimed, 'I have served fifteen years as first cook on board the
_Bristol_,' and then turned his back upon me. Somewhat stunned, but
persevering, I continued meekly to tell him the things I wished him to
attend to. Instantly his tone changed from indignation to supplication,
and he described in feeling terms his rheumatism. 'He enjoyed a neat
kitchen as well as anybody, but what could he do, having his joints all
knotted up with this terrible disease?' and his face grew sadder than
ever. I retired from the field vanquished, and reported progress.
"The gentlemen were not so easily silenced, however, and that very day
began a little investigation. 'Amos, can you make a tapioca pudding?'
cried one, at lunch. 'I have been fifteen years chief cook on the
_Bristol_,' came the answer, with an upward roll of the prayerful eyes.
A little later: 'Amos, bring up a pail of fresh water from the creek.'
Very glad to oblige you, sir (a groan), but I've the rheumatics.' When
one excuse wouldn't answer the other would. So we sent him off, and got
Burt in his place,--a youth without rheumatism or record,--who proved to
be a very bright, willing, and useful boy."
X
TOLTEC GORGE.
I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
--KING LEAR.
Having at last turned our heels reluctantly on the simple-hearted,
prettily-chequered life of the Pueblos, we raced back in a single night
to the plains of San Luis. A long line of telegraph poles stretches out
from Antonito into a true vanishing point across the park, and the train
follows it San Juanward. The noble Sangre de Cristo looms up higher and
higher behind us as we proceed, a mirage lifting the line of cottonwoods
along the Rio Grande into impossibly tall and spindling caricatures of
trees; while the Jemez mountains away to the south are not yet lost to
view, and the striking landmark of Mount San Antonio, smooth and round,
is close at hand. A few miles beyond it the arid level of the
lake-spread plain breaks into white, stony eminences, reared in a bold
front. To surmount these the track is arranged in long, ingenious loops,
in one place, known as the "Whiplash," extending into three parallel
lines, scarcely a stone's throw apart, but disposed terrace-like on the
hillside. On top of the mesa the sage-brush disappears, grass, piñons
and yellow pines taking its place, and we begin to wind among the long,
straight lava ridges at the foot of the divide between the Los Pinos and
the Chama, whence the backward view is remarkably fine. The road here is
like a goat's path in its vagaries, and wagers are made as to the point
of the compass to be aimed at five minutes in advance, or whether the
track on the opposite side of the _crevasse_ is the one we have just
come over, or are now about to pursue.
Describing a number of large curves around constantly deepening
depressions, we reached the breast of a mountain, whence we obtained our
first glimpse into Los Pinos valley; and it came like a sudden
revelation of beauty and grandeur. The approach had been picturesque and
gentle in character. Now we found our train clinging to a narrow pathway
carved out far up the mountain's side, while great masses of a volcanic
conglomerate towered overhead, and the face of the opposing heights
broke off into bristling crags. The river sank deeper and deeper into
the narrowing vale, and the space beneath us to its banks was
excitingly precipitous. We crowded upon the platform, the outer step of
which sometimes hung over an abyss that made us shudder, till some
friendly bank placed itself between us and the almost unbroken descent.
But we learned to enjoy the imminent edge, along which the train crept
so cautiously, and begrudged every instant that the landscape was shut
out by intervening objects.
To say that the vision here is grand, awe-inspiring, painfully
impressive or memorable, falls short of the truth in each case. It is
too much to take in at once, and we were glad to pause again for a
little brain-rest at a telegraph station, hung almost like a bird's nest
among the rocks,--to grow used by degrees to the stupendous picture
spread before us. We were so high that not only the bottom of the
valley, where the silver ribbon of the Los Pinos trailed in and out
among the trees, and underneath the headlands, but even the wooded tops
of the further rounded hills were below us, and we could count the dim,
distant peaks in New Mexico.
Six miles ahead lay the cañon of which we had heard so much,--the Toltec
Gorge, whose praises could not be overdrawn. Evidently his majesty had
entrenched himself in glories beside which any ordinary monarch would
lose his magnificence. Was this king of cañons really so great he could
afford to risk all rivalry? Here, on the left, what noble martello-tower
of native lava is that which stands undizzied on the very brink of the
precipice? I should like to roll it off, and watch it cut a swath
through that puny forest down there, and dam up the whole stream with
its huge breadth. How these passages of spongy rock resound as our
engine drags the long train we have again mounted through their lofty
portals! How narrow apparently are these curved and smooth embankments
that carry us across the ravines, and how spidery look the firmly-braced
bridges that span the torrents! All the way the road-bed is heaped up or
dug out artificially. It is merely a shelf near the summit. It hugs the
wall like a chamois-stalker, creeping stealthily out to the end of and
around each projecting spur; it explores every in-bending gulch, boldly
strides across the water channels, and walks undismayed upon the utmost
verge, where rough cliffs overhang it, and the gulf sinks away hundreds
of feet beneath.
In the most secluded nook of the mountains we come upon Phantom Curve,
with its company of isolated rocks, made of stuff so hard as to have
stood upright, tall, grotesque, and sunburned, beside the pigmy firs and
cowering boulders with which they are surrounded. Miles away you can
trace these black pinnacles, like sentinels, mid-way up the slopes; but
here at hand they fill the eye, and in their fantastic resemblance to
human shapes and things we know in miniature, seem to us crumbled images
of the days when there were giants, and men of Titanic mold set up
mementoes of their brawny heroes,--
"Achaian statues in a world so rich!"
_Phantoms_, they are called, and the statuesque shadows they cast,
moving mysteriously along the white bluffs, as the sun declines, are
uncanny and ghost-like, perhaps; but the brown, rough, grandly grouping
monoliths of lava themselves, are no more phantoms than are the pyramids
of Sahara, and beside them the Theban monuments of the mighty Rameses
would sink into insignificance.
Winding along the slender track, among these solemn forms, we approach
the gorge, the vastly seamed and wrinkled face of whose opposite wall
confronts us under the frown of an intense shade,--unused to the light
from all eternity; but on this, the sunny side, a rosy pile, lifts its
massive head proudly far above us, its square, fearless forehead,--
"Fronting heaven's splendor,
Strong and full and clear."
How should we pass it? On the right stood the solid palisade of the
sierra, rising unbroken to the ultimate heights; on the left the gulf,
its sides more and more nearly vertical, more and more terrible in their
armature of splintered ledges and pike-pointed tree-tops,--more often
breaking away into perpendicular cliffs, whence we could hurl a pebble,
or ourselves, into the mad torrent easily seen but too far below to be
heard; and as we draw nearer, the rosy crags rise higher and more
distinct across our path. We turn a curve in the track, the cars leaning
toward the inside, as if they, too, retreated from the look down into
that "vasty deep," and lo! a gateway tunneled through,--the barrier is
conquered!
The blank of the tunnel gives one time to think. Pictures of the
beetling, ebony-pillared cliffs linger in the retina suddenly deprived
of the reality, and reproduce the seamed and jagged rocks in fiery
similitude upon the darkness, in a twinkling the impression fades, and
at the same instant you catch a gleam of advancing light, and dash out
into the sunshine,--into the sunshine only? Oh, no, out into the
air,--an awful leap abroad into invisibly bounded space; and you catch
your breath, startled beyond self-control!
Then it is all over, and you are still on your feet, listening to the
familiar ring of the brown walls as they fly past.
What was it you saw that made your breathing cease, and the blood chill
in your heart with swift terror? It is hard to remember; but there
remains a feeling of an instant's suspension over an irregular chasm
that seemed cut to the very center of the earth, and, to your dilated
eye, gleamed brightly at the bottom, as though it penetrated even the
realms of Pluto. You knew it opened outwardly into the gorge, for there
in front stood the mighty wall, bracing the mountain far overhead, and
below flashed the foaming river. This is the sum of your recollection,
photographed upon your brain by a mental process more instantaneous than
any application of art, and never to be erased. Gradually you conclude
that the train ran directly out upon a short trestle, one end of which
rests in the mouth of the tunnel, and the other in the jaws of a rock,
cutting. This is the fact; but the traveler reasons it out, for he
cannot see the support beneath his car, which, to all intents, takes a
flying bound across a cleft in the granite eleven hundred measured feet
in depth.
[Illustration: PHANTOM ROCKS.]
Our train having halted, the Artist sought a favorable position for
obtaining the sketch of Toltec Gorge which adorns these pages, the
Photographer became similarly absorbed, and the remaining members of the
expedition zealously examined a spot whose counterpart in rugged and
inspiring sublimity probably does not exist elsewhere in America. A few
rods up the cañon a thin and ragged pinnacle rises abruptly from the
very bottom to a level with the railway track. This point has been
christened Eva Cliff, and when we had gained its crest by dint of much
laborious and hazardous climbing over a narrow gangway of rocks, by
which it is barely connected with the neighboring bank, our exertions
were well repaid by the splendid view of the gorge it afforded.
Just west of the tunnel, and close beside the track, the rocks have been
broken and leveled into a small smooth space, and here, on the 26th of
September, 1881, that gloomiest day in the decade for our people, were
celebrated as impressive memorial services for GARFIELD, the noble man
and beloved president, then lying dead on his stately catafalque in
Cleveland, as were anywhere seen. The weather itself, in these remote
and lonely mountains, seemed in unison with the sadness of the nation,
for heavy black clouds swept overhead, and the wind made solemn moanings
in the shaken trees. It was under circumstances so fittingly mournful
that an excursion party, gathered from nearly every state in the Union,
paused to express the universal sorrow, and to conceive the foundation
of the massive monument which catches the traveler's eye on the brink of
the gorge, and upon whose polished tablet are engraved these words:
[Illustration:
---------------------------------
/ IN MEMORIAM. \
/ \
/ JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, \
/ \
| PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, |
| |
| DIED SEPTEMBER 19, 1881, |
| |
| MOURNED BY ALL THE PEOPLE. |
| |
| Erected by Members of the National |
| Association of General Passenger and |
\ Ticket Agents, who held Memorial /
\ Burial Services on this spot, /
\ September 26, 1881. /
\ /
+-------------------------------+ ]
XI
ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER.
There in the gorges that widen, descending
From cloud and from cold into summer eternal,
Gather the threads of the ice-gendered fountains,--
Gather to riotous torrents of crystal,
And giving each shelvy recess where they dally
The blooms of the north and its evergreen turfage.
--BAYARD TAYLOR.
Though the climax of the pass to the sight-seer is Toltec Gorge, the
actual crest of the Pinos-Chama divide is at Cumbres, some fifteen miles
westward, and several hundred feet higher. After leaving Toltec, the
brink of the cliff is skirted for some time, and many grand and exciting
views are presented; but the stream is broken into cascades, and rapidly
rises to the plane of the track. Passing a number of snow-sheds, the
train is soon twisting around shallow side ravines, and at last, after
making a great circle of nearly a mile, there comes a stoppage of that
dragging sensation which the wheels impart on an upward grade, and the
cars halt on the little level space at the summit. From Antonito to
Cumbres the maximum ascent to the mile is only seventy-five feet, while
on the western slope the descent per mile reaches two hundred and eleven
feet. This intrepid railway crosses the main ranges of the Rocky
Mountains over seven or eight distinct passes; and in every instance the
locating engineers have followed one water-course upward to its head,
and another downward to the valley, finding invariably the sources of
these oppositely-flowing brooks to be in springs only a few feet or rods
apart at the top. In the present case so slight is the separation that
we seem to stop beside the Los Pinos, and to start beside Wolf Creek.
Although at an altitude of about 9,500 feet, the neat station buildings
at Cumbres are located in a depressed indentation, whence the
surrounding hills shut off all outlook.
Our train is scarcely in motion again, however, ere a deep gully opens
at our feet, and we commence to crawl cautiously around the protruding
face of Cumbres Mountain, with its curiously-piled top of red and gray
sandstone, and its precipitous front, in which is hewn midway a shelf
for the track. Beyond this we pass a great curve, and then overlook a
beautiful valley, which leads down into the broad basin through which
the Rio Chama pursues its way southeasterly to its junction with the
Rio Grande at Chamita. The view here is picturesque, and well worthy the
reproduction our artist has seen fit to give it. There are glimpses of
far-off, white-edged mesa-lands, with spaces of shadowy cobalt between.
The brook sinks deeper, and its grassy banks are full of yellow and
purple asters, in brightest bloom, glorifying the whole hillside up to
where, a short distance from its bed, begins the solid spruce and aspen
forest. Near Lobato, the track crosses from one tawny ridge to another,
on a lofty iron bridge, and we note that Wolf Creek is here a lovely
stream, with many cozy nooks in which the sportsman may pitch his tent,
and are informed that the water is full of trout, while the wooded
mountain slopes abound in large and small game. Once down in the valley,
the way is through smooth lawns and pleasant groves until Chama is
reached, and here we pause to ask questions about sheep.