North of the Placer Ridges and divided from them by the intervening
valley of the Galisteo, are bold bluffs of trap, the cut edges of a
plateau forming a _mesa_, from which rise the volcanic cones of Los
Cerillos. From these hills rushed the fiery lava-flow widespread over
the country, giving it a worn-out look, desert-like and depressing
to the last degree. Geologists assert that, at a very recent period
in the world’s changes, fire, ice, and water have, with tremendous
subterranean forces, left here marks of a storm more terrible than our
conceptions of the Deluge. The hot springs, now slowly dying out, are
the last of the series of events once performed on a scale which almost
baffles human conception. The faint departing remnants of once terrific
forces point to something which must be described by a broader word
than earthquake--a fiery convulsion, that altered the whole face of the
country, if we may judge by the marks the storm has left.
In order to avoid a rocky unheaval, thrown out by the expiring energies
of the volcanic epoch, not yet closed, we started back to Santa Fé by
a circuitous route, and soon came on signs of a camp--heaps of white
ashes, circled by burnt and blackened ends of piñon chips. The _vega_
is sere and parched as the plains of Arabia, and in dreamy mood we
could easily fancy the last tent of the Moslem had just been struck,
the heavy standard folded by slim figures in sweeping burnous; and we
glanced along the horizon for a gleam of slender spears, and the long
caravan, made spectral by distance, slowly vanishing into the mystic
silence of the desert.
Involuntarily we looked for valuables dropped by Haroun and Mohammed,
as they untethered the camels and packed the hampers; scattered spices;
a jeweled cup of gold, with the lump of ambergris at the bottom; a
white turban; a shawl of price.
No such thing.
There lay on the ground, instead, a battered sardine-box, a sliver
of wagon-tongue, the broken end of a saw (pocketed by Juan Fresco),
four greasy cards (also appropriated by Cool John), two used-up
paper collars, and an empty black bottle. Strong testimonials to the
high superiority of our arts, and the refinements of our boasted
civilization.
A little way from the road, fastened to a scrubby piñon tree, was a
fluttering white signal; and, thinking it might be a sign of distress,
we stopped the willing mules, and all got out to see what was the
matter. With the help of a match, we made out a rudely penciled hand
on canvas of flour-bag, pointing in the direction of Los Cerillos, and
below it read the bold legend,--
“SWEET HOME SALOON.”
Looking ahead, we hailed Sweet Home itself. A roofless pen of pine
boughs, fencing in narrow shelves of black bottles, and a camp-stool--a
dark puzzle made of mule-bones and cowhide, pronounced a relic of
the palæozoic age by the geologist. The establishment was guarded
by a wolfish dog, which the bravest of us did not care to examine;
so we hurried back to the ambulance, regardless of prickly pear,
and in the valley’s edge passed the white tents of the vanguard
of civilization--an army of laborers, working day and night on
the railroad track. They will not march till they have broken the
fascinating spell, the poetic glamor which the romantic Espego threw
over Nueva Espagna three hundred years ago, and which has rested on
it like an alluring mystery ever since. If you would dream dreams
and see visions, now is the time to come. If you would taste the
wild charm, hasten to catch it before the wear of every-day travel
tramples out the primitive customs. It is still to a good degree a
country apart from the rest of the United States; mountain-locked and
little known, severed, as it has been, from the great highways of
commerce. Its history is a romance and a tragedy, and, as in every
country imperfectly explored, it holds more or less of the mysterious.
Here are extensive ruins; unparalleled natural phenomena; mountains,
“flaunting their crowns of snow everlastingly in the face of the sun,”
that bear in their bosom undeveloped mines, dazzling the imagination;
cañons with perpendicular sides a mile in height; savages merciless and
bloodthirsty, who in undying hate still dispute the progress of foreign
civilization. But the civilizer is coming; is here. The waste lands of
the wandering tribes will be divided and sold by the acre, instead of
the league. The dozing Mexican will be jostled on the elbow, and will
wake from his long trance to find himself in the way.
A procession of phantoms is flying along “_El Camino del ferro
carril_”; whispering voices are drowned in the hiss of steam; and the
midnight hush of the black cañon is stirred by the whirr of beautiful
wings, unheard save by ears attuned to finest harmonies. By the time
this letter reaches the eyes so dear to the writer, there will be no
haunted solitudes along Los Cerillos. The pick and shovels of Mike
Brady and the O’Flannegans will have put to flight the finer fancies of
musing antiquary and dreaming pilgrim. You know certain boundaries mark
the limit of every created thing, be it real or imaginary.
Fairies never trip it on pavements. They are too delicate for such
footing. Ghosts haunt only houses where men have lived and died; and
the epic of history cannot abide the screech of the locomotive nor
its penetrating headlight. It requires broken, disconnected threads,
doubtful testimony, dim lights--above all, the misty lines of distance.
The locomotive brings the ends of the earth together, and dashes into
nothingness delicate tissues woven in darkness, like certain delicate
laces, whose threads break in the weaving by day.
And here is something brought by the locomotive.
In the luminous haze of the paling twilight appeared a peddler, lying
beside his pack, sheltered by a rock, under which he had crept, which
looked as though it might fall any moment and crush him to atoms. On
nearer view, we discovered, instead of peddler and pack, the pioneer
organ grinder, the first to set foot in New Mexico. His shoes were
ragged and travel-worn. He wore a cast-off uniform of army blue, and
a red handkerchief knotted round his throat. Sun-scorched gray hair
straggled round the edge of his black skull-cap, and mingled with the
dust of the ground. Overcome by heat and fatigue, he was dead asleep,
one hand resting on the rusty green curtain which draped the organ,
the other holding the neck of a little brown dog, about the size of a
pinch of snuff, curled up in his bosom. In the emptiness of the desert
every peaceful thing is welcome. We stopped, as a matter of course.
“A bad place for a tramp, unless he can eat rock and drink mirage,”
said our polyglott antiquary, as he jumped from the ambulance. He shook
the sleeper gently, and addressed him in Italian. The man slowly rose
to his feet. “Ah! excellenza,” said he, in the spoken music of Southern
Italy, “your voice is like the sound of fountains in the ear of the
thirsty. Tell me, is there no water in this land?”
“None within six miles; but we have a canteen left, which you may
have,” and the kindly antiquary produced the dirty frontier flask,
sewed up in flannel, to keep its contents cool--which it never does.
The musician unscrewed the lid, and took a long draught.
“It is better than wine,” he said, “for Victor can drink it too,” and
he poured the precious liquid in a tin cup. The little brute, who was
pretty much all tail, gave a friendly bark, and wagged himself almost
to pieces as he slaked his thirst.
“Where are you going?” we asked.
“To Albuquerque, to Bernalillo, to Las Lunas”--and he named the various
towns and stations on the route to Old Mexico.
“The country is overrun by Apaches--Indians who will torture you and
then kill you.”
“The banditti will not hurt,” said the old man, simply, “when I give
them this.”
He lifted the box to its one leg, raised the curtain, turned the crank;
a warning click, and lo! “Hear me, Norma.” How strangely the familiar
air sounded across that plain, so wide, so dim, so still! Through a
floating mist, not of the earth or of the sky, I saw, not the wanderer
and his wretched instrument, but a radiant vision of glittering lights,
the brilliant crowd in the horseshoe curve, hanging breathless on the
voice of the divine singer, now leading the starry choir of Heaven.
Surely, there is not another place in the world where a party of
sensible people would fool away an hour on an organ-grinder. Every
well-regulated mind (and I address no other) will perceive the
absurdity. But it was so long since we had heard one, he was such a
delightful reminder of bright days and brighter nights, that over and
over again we made the drowsy player drone his dull tunes. They brought
us serene and golden Italy, the racing shadows and glancing sunbeams of
the far Campania; and, best of all, the love-songs of home--that sweet
spot, toward which I look as the first woman, exiled forever, must have
looked toward the barred gates of lost Paradise.
When the wheezy machine rested, we gave the player a small (very small)
fortune in loose change and the remnants of our lunch. He had only
a cracker and two onions in his wallet, and the wayfarer would have
knelt for gratitude, had we allowed it, while he rained blessings on
our heads, in the name of the Queen of Heaven, the saints, and all the
angels.
“Where do you camp?” asked the antiquary, when the benediction slacked.
“Wherever the night finds me. I have a blanket, Victor is company, and
the sky is my tent.”
There was infinite pathos in the words and his glance up to the arch
overhead. The flash of hero’s armor in the changeful curtains of
the glorious tent warned us to go on; but we were slow to leave the
stranger, and would have taken him with us, but the ambulance was
already over-loaded.
He stood bareheaded long as we were in sight, lazily grinding “The
Last Rose of Summer,” as though he was falling asleep. Faint and clear
the music drifted after us, by distance mellowed into sweetness. Miles
away, now lost in the valley, now low on the hills, floated
“Tufts of tune like thistle-down,”
wafted along by the soft night-breeze. When the last wandering note
died away we took up the refrain “Oh! who would inhabit this cold world
alone?” and, looking at the sentinel stars, thought pityingly of the
exile, alone in his tent--a mighty pavilion of royal purple, which
deepening shadows widened into a solitude vast as eternity, mysterious
as death.
The singing was very soft, for Thalia was crying, as we discovered by
tiny sniffs muffled behind her hankerchief, and you know how contagious
home-sickness is, and the sweeping gloom was oppressive even with the
best company. The cheerful day, with all its trailing splendors, was
dead; the fine gold of sunset became dross. A pale, white shining
in the east announced the rising moon, and in its mystic glow the
mountains put on spectral shapes and journeyed with us. A solemn
stillness filled the night and rested on the party which had set out
so gayly in the morning. One by one the voices hushed, and silence
followed, so intense it was almost painful.
We will anticipate, as our friends the novelists say, and follow
the march of the minstrel--one of the last of the gentle race of
troubadours. We heard of his safe arrival at Albuquerque and at
Bernalillo. Two days’ journey southward, the mail-boy reported having
seen him, moving in a dazed, bewildered way, mourning for the little
doggie, which was missing. “There are no sausage factories here,” said
our informant, with a smile of ghastly significance. “But a big Mexican
dog could swallow that pup like a pill.”
A lively letter from a friend in Silver City recorded his passage
through the lower country. The Pueblo Indians gave him of their poor
substance, and made him at home in their mud hovels, regarding him as
a great medicine-man, with a magic box. In their childish curiosity,
they wanted to chop open the cage and see the singing-birds inside. At
a little village, whose name I do not now recall, the whole population
flocked round the itinerant. He was a choice item for the local editor
of the _Pharos of the Occident_, a miner living on imagination, who
fancied himself a brilliant writer and financier, and in a lurid
editorial he hailed the musician as the forerunner of Thomas and
Mapleson, and hinted it was high time to form a stock company for the
purpose of building an adobe opera-house. Everywhere the player was
well received, till he reached Socorro. On the edge of the Jornado,
from immemorial ages overrun by the Apache, the Western Bedouin, every
trace of him was lost.
The tameless warriors of Victorio’s band are deaf to “Hear me, Norma,”
and I greatly fear the gray scalp of the minstrel is a trophy in the
belt of the red chief, and that his poor old bones lie unburied in
the treeless, waterless, wind-swept desert, truly named, by the first
Spaniard who dared its perils, _Jornada del Muerto_--Journey of Death.