ZUNI, THE HOME OF THE AZTECS.
As the leveller and his rodman ascended the slope on which Zuni is
built, they saw that the town reached entirely across it, and seemingly
presented a blank wall of irregular heights, containing only two or
three low arched openings. A ladder, here and there, reached from the
ground to a flat terrace on top of the wall; but evidently the means of
entering the place were few, and could readily be made less. Outside of
the wall were long ranges of corrals, fenced with poles, set close
together, and fixed firmly in the ground. These poles, which were of all
lengths, and the tops of ladders projecting everywhere above the roofs
of the town, gave the place a peculiarly ragged and novel appearance.
Glen wondered at the height of the buildings, most of which were of five
or six stories, and what the ladders were for.
Seeing no other way of gaining an entrance, they followed an Indian, who
led a burro bearing an immense load of fagots on his back, into one of
the dark arched passages through the wall. It was just wide enough to
admit the laden donkey, and so low that, as they followed him, they were
obliged to stoop to avoid striking their heads against its roof. It was
so long that it evidently led beneath an entire block of houses.
Finally they emerged from its darkness into one of the most novel
plazas, or squares, of the world. It was surrounded by buildings of
several stories in height, but very few of them had any doors, while the
tiny windows of the lower stories were placed high up, beyond a man's
reach. On the flat roof of the lower house, or first story, a second
house was built; but it was so much narrower than the first as to leave
a broad walk on the roof in front of it. Above this second house rose a
third, fourth, fifth, and often a sixth, each one narrower than the one
beneath it, so that the whole looked like a gigantic flight of steps.
These houses were built either of adobe or of stone, plastered over with
adobe mud; and nearly all those on the ground floor were entered, as
Robinson Crusoe entered his castle, by climbing a ladder to the roof,
and descending another that led down through a skylight. Thus, if an
enemy should succeed in forcing his way through the narrow tunnel into
the plaza, the people would merely retire to their house-tops, draw up
their ladders, and he would find it as hard to get at them as ever.
The upper tiers of houses had doors opening on the roofs of those below
them; but ladders were necessary to climb up from one terrace to
another, so that they were everywhere the most prominent feature of the
place.
There were but few of the inhabitants in the plaza, or in the narrow
lanes leading from it to other open squares; but they swarmed on the
flat house-tops, and gazed down on our friends as eagerly as the latter
gazed up at them. Americans were curiosities to the people of Zuni in
those days.
"Hello!" exclaimed Glen, as they stood in the middle of the plaza,
wondering which way they should go. "Here come some white fellows
dressed up like Indians. I wonder who they can be?"
Sure enough, two young men, having white skins, blue eyes, and yellow
hair, but wearing the leggings and striped blankets of Indians, entered
the square as Glen spoke. He shouted to them, both in English and
Mexican, but they only glanced at him in a startled manner, and then,
hurriedly climbing the nearest ladder, they joined a group who were
curiously inspecting Glen and his companion from a roof.
"Well! that is queer," said the former. "Who do you suppose those chaps
are?"
"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they were two of the white Indians I
have read of," answered "Billy" Brackett; "and, if so, they are the
greatest curiosities we'll see in this town."
"I never heard of them," said Glen. "Where did they come from?"
"That's more than I can tell, or anybody else. All we know is that the
earliest Spaniards found a race of white people living among the Pueblo
Indians, whom they describe as being exactly like these chaps grinning
at us from that roof. In one respect they are a distinct race, as they
have never been allowed to marry with the dark-skinned Indians; but in
every other respect they are thorough Puebloes, and there is no
tradition going back far enough to show that they were ever anything
else. I believe that the race is nearly extinct, and that they are now
so few in number as to be rarely seen."
In this "Billy" Brackett was correct; for at that time there were but
three of those white Indians in Zuni, two men and a woman.
Before leaving this remarkable town of curious people, Glen discovered
that they kept eagles for pets, and were also very fond of snakes,
especially rattlesnakes, which they did not hesitate to handle freely
and even to hold in their mouths. He saw the entire population turn out
on the flat roofs of their houses at daybreak, and, facing the east,
patiently await the coming of Montezuma, whom they firmly believed would
appear some morning in the place of the sun. He heard of, but was not
allowed to see, the perpetual fire, lighted by Montezuma, that has been
kept burning for ages by a family of priests, set apart and supported by
the people for that particular purpose. He saw women grinding corn into
fine white meal between two stones, and baking it into delicious thin
cakes on another. He saw them weaving blankets, of sheep's wool, so fine
that they will hold water for a whole day, and so strong that they will
last a long lifetime. He ate some of the white dried peaches and other
fruits that these Indians raise in such abundance and prepare with such
skill. And what pleased him more than anything else was that, in
exchange for two flour-sacks and a small piece of bacon, one of the
Indians made him a fine buckskin shirt, very much adorned with fringes,
that he wore all the rest of the winter.
It certainly was a most interesting place, and the whole party would
gladly have lingered there longer than the three days that could be
spared to it. But it was now November, and they must be beyond the San
Francisco Mountains before the passes were blocked with heavy snows. So
they bade good-bye to Zuni and New Mexico, and, taking their way past
Jacob's Well, where a fine spring bubbles up at the bottom of a
funnel-shaped pit, six hundred feet across at the top, and a hundred and
fifty feet deep, they entered the little-known region of Northern
Arizona.
For three months they toiled through that wild country, as lost to the
view and knowledge of white civilization as though they were running
their line through Central Africa. Then they emerged on the bank of the
mighty Colorado, and, looking across its turbid flood, saw the barren
wastes of the Great Colorado Desert; but they gave a shout of joy at the
sight, for, with all its dreariness of aspect, that was California, and
beyond it lay the Pacific, the goal of their hopes.
The last three months had been filled with toil, hardships, and
adventure. Although in that time they saw no white men, nor men of any
kind beyond catching occasional glimpses of the stealthy Apaches, who
hung on their trail for weeks, and with whom they exchanged more than
one rifle-shot, they were never without evidences that this whole vast
country had once been occupied by a mighty people. Hardly a day passed
that Glen did not hold his rod on the ruined foundation-wall of some
huge structure of long ago, or stumble over heaps of broken pottery
graceful in form and design, or gaze wonderingly at the stone houses of
ancient cliff-dwellers perched on ledges now inaccessible, or walk in
the dry beds of crumbling aqueducts, or select choice specimens from
piles of warlike implements fashioned from shining crystal or milk-white
quartz, or, in some way, have his attention called to the fact that he
was traversing a country in which had dwelt millions of his kind, who
had long since passed away and been forgotten. He had puzzled over miles
of hieroglyphic inscriptions and rude pictures, drawn on the smooth
black walls of rugged canons, and learned from them fragmentary tales of
ancient battles or of encounters with savage beasts.
Then, too, he had known hunger and thirst and bitter cold. His Christmas
dinner, eaten during a short pause from work on the line, had been a bit
of spoiled bacon and a couple of wormy hard-tack, with which, in honor
of the day, he had his full share of "Billy" Brackett's treasured
cheese, brought out at last to grace this feast. Not only were their
provisions nearly exhausted at that time, but it was the fifth day on
which they had been unable to wash, for want of water. Two weeks before,
a wagon had been sent to the mining-camp of Prescott, nearly a hundred
miles away, and they had nearly given up all hopes of its safe return.
That night it came into camp, and that night, too, they found a number
of rock cisterns full of water. In the darkness of that same evening,
while hastening from the pool in which he had been bathing, to get his
share of the Christmas supper, poor Glen had run plump into a gigantic
cactus, and filled his body with its tiny, barbed thorns. Altogether it
was a memorable Christmas, and one he will never forget.
On the last night of December they built a gigantic bonfire of whole
trees, and welcomed in the new year by the light of its leaping flames.
They had passed through vast tracts of wonderful fertility and beauty,
unknown to white men, and through regions abounding in game that they
had no time to hunt. From the summit of the Aztec Pass they had gazed,
with dismay, over the boundless expanse of the Black Forest, and then
had plunged into its dark depths. They had threaded their way through
labyrinths of precipitous canons, the walls of which rose thousands of
feet above their heads, and had known of others still more tremendous.
They had waded through the snows of the San Francisco Mountains, and
revelled in the warmth and beauty of the superb Val de Chino, where snow
and ice are unknown. They had dodged the crashing boulders hurled down
on them in Union Pass by the Hualapi Indians, posted on the inaccessible
heights far above them. Here they had lost a wagon, crushed to splinters
by one of these masses of rock; but no lives had been sacrificed, and
their number was still the same as when they left the Rio Grande. Now
they were on the bank of the Colorado, with only one desert and one
range of mountains yet to cross. These seemed so little, after all they
had gone through; and yet that desert alone was two hundred and fifty
miles wide. Two hundred and fifty miles of sand, sage-brush, and alkali;
the most barren region of country within the limits of the United
States. If they could have looked ahead and seen what the crossing of
that desert meant, they would have entered upon the undertaking with
heavy hearts and but faint hopes of accomplishing it. How fortunate it
is that we cannot look ahead and see the trials that await us. We would
never dare face them if they should all appear to us at once; while, by
meeting them singly, and attacking them one by one, they are overcome
with comparative ease.
But neither Glen nor his companions were thinking of the trials ahead of
them as they came in sight of the Colorado River. They were only
thinking of those left behind, and what a glorious thing it was to have
got thus far along in their tremendous journey. The transit-party had
run their line to the river's bank and gone to camp a mile or so below,
when the levellers came up, and Glen held his rod, for a final reading,
at the water's edge.
He had just noted the figures in his book, and waved an "All right" to
"Billy" Brackett, when he was startled by a rush of hoofs and a joyous
shout. The next instant a horse was reined sharply up beside him, while
its rider was wringing his hand and uttering almost incoherent words of
extravagant joy at once more seeing him.