Through Our Unknown Southwest Part 9

You can do the Canon cheaply, or you can do it extravagantly. You can go to it by driving across the Painted Desert, 200 miles; or motoring in from Flagstaff--a half-day trip; or by train from Williams, return ticket something more than $5. Or you can take your own pack horses, and ride in yourself; or you can employ one of the well known local trail makers and guides, like John Ba.s.s, and go off up the Canon on a camping trip of weeks or months.

Once you reach the rim of the Canon, you can camp under your own tent roof and cater your own meals. Or you may go to the big hotel and pay $4 to $15 a day. Or you may get tent quarters at the Bright Angel Camp--$1 a day, and whatever you pay for your meals. Or you may join one of John Ba.s.s' Camps which will cost from $4 up, according to the number of horses and the size of your party.

First of all, understand what the Grand Canon is, and what it isn't. We ordinarily think of a canon as a narrow cleft or trench in the rocks, seldom more than a few hundred feet deep and wide, and very seldom more than a few miles long. The Grand Canon is nearly as long as from New York to Canada, as wide as the city of New York is long, and as deep straight as a plummet as the Canadian Rockies or lesser Alps are high.

In other words, it is 217 miles long, from thirteen to twenty wide, and has a straight drop a mile deep, or seven miles as the trail zigzags down. You think of a canon as a great trench between mountains. This one is a colossal trench with side canons going off laterally its full length, dozens of them to each mile, like ribs along a backbone.

Ordinarily, to climb a 7,000 foot mountain, you have to go up. At the Grand Canon, you come to the brink of the sagebrush plain and jump off--to climb these peaks. Peak after peak, you lose count of them in the mist of primrose fire and lilac light and purpling shadows. To climb these peaks, you go down, down 7,000 feet a good deal steeper than the ordinary stair and in places quite as steep as the Metropolitan Tower elevator. In fact, if the Metropolitan Tower and the Singer Building and the Flatiron and Washington's Shaft in the Capital City were piled one on top of another in a pinnacled pyramid, they would barely reach up one-seventh of the height of these ma.s.sive peaks swimming in countless numbers in the color of the Canon.

So much for dimensions! Now as to time. If you have only one day, you can dive in by train in the morning and out by night, and between times go to Sunrise Point or--if you are a robust walker--down Bright Angel Trail to the bank of the Colorado River, seven miles. If you have two days at your disposal, you can drive out to Grand View--fourteen miles--and overlook the panorama of the Canon twenty miles in all directions. If you have more days yet at your disposal, there are good trips on wild trails to Dripping Springs and to Gertrude Point and to Cataract Canon and by aerial tram across the Colorado River to the Kaibab Plateau on the other side. In fact, if you stayed at the Grand Canon a year and were not afraid of trailless trips, you could find a new view, a new wonder place, new stamping grounds each day. Remember that the Canon itself is 217 miles long; and it has lateral canons uncounted.

When you reach El Tovar you are told two of the first things to do are take the drives--three miles each way--to Sunrise and to Sunset Points.

Don't! Save your dollars, and walk them both. By carriage, the way leads through the pine woods back from the rim for three miles to each point.

By walking, you can keep on an excellent trail close to the rim and do each in twenty minutes; for the foot trails are barely a mile long. Also by walking, you can escape the loud-mouthed, bull-voiced tourist who bawls out his own shallow knowledge of erosion to the whole carriageful just at the moment you want to float away in fancy amid opal lights and upper heights where the Olympic and Hindoo and Norse G.o.ds took refuge when unbelief drove them from their old resorts. In fact, if you keep looking long enough through that lilac fire above seas of primrose mists, you can almost fancy those h.o.a.ry old G.o.ds of Beauty and Power floating round angles of the ma.s.sive lower mountains, shifting the scenes and beckoning one another from the wings of this huge amphitheater. The s.p.a.ce-filling talker is still bawling out about "the mighty powers of erosion"; and a thin-faced curate is putting away a figure of speech about "Almighty Power" for his next sermon. Personally, I prefer the old pagan way of expressing these things in the short cut of a personifying G.o.d who did a smashing big business with the hammer of Thor, or the sea horses of Neptune or the forked lightnings of old loud-thundering Jove.

You can walk down Bright Angel Trail to the river at the bottom of the Canon; but unless your legs have a pair of very good benders under the knees, you'll not be able to walk up that trail the same day, for the way down is steep as a stair and the distance is seven miles. In that case, better spend the night at the camp known as the Indian Gardens halfway down in a beautifully watered dell; or else have the regular daily party bring down the mules for you to the river. Or you can join the regular tourist party both going down and coming up. Mainly because we wanted to see the sunrise, but also because a big party on a narrow trail is always unsafe and a gabbling crowd on a beautiful trail is always agony, two of us rose at four A. M. and walked down the trail during sunrise, leaving orders for a special guide to fetch mules down for us to the river. s.p.a.ce forbids details of the tramp, except to say it was worth the effort, twice over worth the effort in spite of knees that sent up pangs and protests for a week.

It had rained heavily all night and the path was very slippery; but if rain brings out the colors of the Petrified Forests, you can imagine what it does to sunrise in a sea of blood-red mountain peaks. Much of the trail is at an angle of forty-five degrees; but it is wide and well sh.o.r.ed up at the outer edge. The foliage lining the trail was dripping wet; and the sunlight struck back from each leaf in spangles of gold. An incense as of morning worship filled the air with the odor of cedars and cloves and wild nutmeg pinks and yucca bloom. There are many more birds below the Canon rim than above it; and the dawn was filled with s.n.a.t.c.hes of song from bluebirds and yellow finches and water ousels, whose notes were like the tinkle of pure water. What looked like a tiny red hillock from the rim above is now seen to be a mighty mountain, four, five, seven thousand feet from river to peak, with walls smooth as if planed by the Artificer of all Eternity. In any other place, the gorges between these peaks would be dignified by the names of canons. Here, they are mere wings to the main stage setting of the Grand Canon. We reached the Indian Garden's Camp in time for breakfast and rested an hour before going on down to the river. The trail followed a gentle descent over sand-hills and rocky plateaus at first, then suddenly it began to drop sheer in the section known as the Devil's Corkscrew. The heat became sizzling as you descended; but the grandeur grew more imposing from the stupendous height and sheer sides of the brilliantly colored gorges and ma.s.ses of shadows above. Then the Devil's Corkscrew fell into a sandy dell where a tiny waterfall trickled with the sound of the voice of many waters in the great silence. A cloudburst would fill this gorge in about a jiffy; but a cloudburst is the last thing on earth you need expect in this land of scant showers and no water. Suddenly, you turn a rock angle, and the yellow, muddy, turbulent flood of the Colorado swirls past you, tempestuous, noisy, sullen and dark, filling the narrow canon with the war of rock against water. What seemed to be mere foothills far above, now appear colossal peaks sheer up and down, penning the angry river between black walls. It was no longer hot. We could hear a thunder shower reverberating back in some of the valleys of the Canon; and the rain falling between us and the red rocks was as a curtain to the scene shifting of those old earth and mountain and water G.o.ds hiding in the wings of the vast amphitheater.

And if you want a wilder, more eery trail than down Bright Angel, go from Dripping Springs out to Gertrude Point. I know a great many wild mountain trails in the Rockies, North and South; but I have never known one that will give more thrills from its sheer beauty and sheer daring.

You go out round the ledges of precipice after precipice, where nothing holds you back from a fall 7,000 feet straight as a stone could drop, nothing but the sure-footedness of your horse; out and out, round and round peak after peak, till you are on the tip top and outer edge of one of the highest mountains in the Canon. This is the trail of old Louis Boucher, one of the beauty-loving souls who first found his way into the center of the Canon and built his own trail to one of its grandest haunts. Louis used to live under the arch formed by the Dripping Springs; but Louis has long since left, and the trail is falling away and is now one for a horse that can walk on air and a head that doesn't feel the sensations of champagne when looking down a straight 7,000 feet into darkness. If you like that kind of a trail, take the trip; for it is the best and wildest view of the Canon; but take two days to it, and sleep at Louis' deserted camp under the Dripping Springs. Yet if you don't like a trail where you wonder if you remembered to make your will and what would happen if the gravel slipped from your horse's feet one of these places where the next turn seems to jump off into atmosphere, then wait; for the day must surely come when all of the Grand Canon's 217 miles will be made as easily and safely accessible to the American public as Egypt.

CHAPTER IX

THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE OF SANTA FE

It lies to the left of the city Plaza--a long, low, one-story building flanking the whole length of one side of the Plaza, with big yellow pine pillars supporting the arcade above the public walk, each pillar surmounted by the fluted architrave peculiar to Spanish-Moorish architecture. It is yellow adobe in the sunlight--very old, very sleepy, very remote from latter-day life, the most un-American thing in all America, the only governor's palace from Athabasca to the Gulf of Mexico, from Sitka to St. Lawrence, that exists to-day precisely as it existed one hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, four hundred years ago--back, back beyond that to the days when there were no white men in America. Uncover the outer plaster in the six-foot thickness of the walls in the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe, and what do you find? Solid adobe and brick? Not much! The walled-up, conical fireplaces and meal bins and corn caves of a pueblo people who lived on the site of modern Santa Fe hundreds of years before the Spanish founded this capital here in 1605. For years it has been a dispute among historians--Bandelier, Hodge, Twitch.e.l.l, Governor Prince, Mr. Reed--whether any prehistoric race dwelt where Santa Fe now stands.

Only in the summer of 1912, when it was necessary to replace some old beams and cut some arches through the six-foot walls was it discovered that the huge part.i.tions covered in their centers walls antedating the coming of the Spaniards--walls with the little conical fireplaces of Indian pueblos, with such meal bins and corn shelves as you find in the prehistoric cave dwellings.

We have such a pa.s.sion for destroying the old and replacing it with the new in America that you can scarcely place your hand on a structure in the New World that stands intact as it was before the Revolution. We somehow or other take it for granted that these mute witnesses of ancient heroism have nothing to teach us with their mossed walls and low-beamed ceilings and dumb, majestic dignity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Governor's Palace at Santa Fe, New Mexico, within the walls of which are found the conical fireplaces of the Indians who lived here hundreds of years before the Spaniards came]

To this, the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe is the one and complete exception in America. It flanks the cottonwoods of the Plaza, yellow adobe in the sunlight--very old, very sleepy, very remote from latter-day life, but with a quaint, quiet atmosphere that travelers scour Europe to find. Look up to the _vigas_, or beams of the ceiling, yellowed and browned and mellowed with age. Those _vigas_ have witnessed strange figures stalking the s.p.a.cious halls below. If the ceiling beams could throw their memories on some moving picture screen, there would be such a panorama of varied personages as no other palace in the world has witnessed. Leave out the hackneyed tale of General Lew Wallace writing "Ben Hur" in a back room of the Palace; or the fact that three different flags flung their folds over old Santa Fe in a single century. He who knows anything at all about Santa Fe, knows that Spanish power gave place to Mexican, and the Mexican regime to American rule. Also, that General Lew Wallace wrote "Ben Hur" in a back room of the Palace, while he was governor of New Mexico. And you only have to use your eyes to know that Santa Fe, itself, is a bit of old Spain set down in the modern United States of America. The donkeys trotting to market under loads of wood, the ragged peon riders bestriding burros no higher than a saw horse, the natives stalking past in bright serape or blanket, moccasined and hatless--all tell you that you are in a region remote from latter-day America.

But here is another sort of picture panorama! It is between 1680 and 1710.

A hatless youth, swarthy from five years of terrible exposure, hair straight as a string, gabbling French but speaking no Spanish, a slave white traded from Indian tribe to Indian tribe, all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of New Spain, is brought before the viceroy. Do you know who he is? He is Jean L'Archeveque, the French-Canadian lad who helped to murder La Salle down on Trinity Bay in Texas. What are the French doing down on Trinity Bay? Do they intend to explore and claim this part of America, too? In the abuses of slavery among the Indians for five years, the lad has paid the terrible penalty for the crime into which he was betrayed by his youth. He is scarred with wounds and beatings. He is too guilt-stricken ever to return to New France. His information may be useful to New Spain; so he is enrolled in the guards of the Spanish Viceroy of Santa Fe; and he is sent out to San Ildefonso and Santa Clara, where he founds a family and where his records may be seen to this day. For those copy-book moralists who like to know that Divine retribution occasionally works out in daily life, it may be added that Jean L'Archeveque finally came to as violent a death as he had brought to the great French explorer, La Salle.

Or take a panorama of a later day. It is just before the fall of Spanish rule. The Governor sits in his Palace at Santa Fe, a mightier autocrat than the Pope in Rome; for, as the Russians say, "G.o.d is high in His Heavens," and the King is far away, and those who want justice in Santa Fe, must pay--pay--pay--pay in gold coin that can be put in the iron chest of the viceroy. (You can see specimens of those iron chests all through New Mexico yet--chests with a dozen secret springs to guard the family fortune of the hidden gold bullion.) A woman bursts into the presence of the Viceroy, and throws herself on her knees. It is a terrible tale--the kind of tale we are too finical to tell in these modern days, though that is not saying there are not many such tales to be told. The woman's young sister has married an officer of the Viceroy's ring. He has beaten her as he would a slave. He has treated her to vile indecencies of which only h.e.l.l keeps record. She had fled to her father; but the father, fearing the power of the Viceroy, had sent her back to the man; and the man has killed her with his brutalities. (I have this whole story from a lineal descendant of the family.) The woman throws back her _rebozo_, drops to her knees before the Viceroy, and demands justice. The Viceroy thinks and thinks. A woman more or less!

What does it matter? The woman's father had been afraid to act, evidently. The husband is a member of the government ring. Interference might stir up an ugly mess--revelations of extortion and so on! Besides, justice is worth so much per; and this woman--what has she to pay? This Viceroy will do nothing. The woman rises slowly, incredulous. Is this justice? She denounces the Viceroy in fiery, impa.s.sioned speech. The Viceroy smiles and twirls his mustachios. What can a woman do? The woman proclaims her imprecation of a court that fails of justice. (Do our courts fail of justice? Is there no lesson in that past for us?) Do you know what she did? She did what not one woman in a million could do to-day, when conditions are a thousand fold easier. She went back to her home. It was just about where the pretty Spanish house of Mr. Morley of the Archaeological School stands to-day. She gathered up all the loose gold she could and bound it in a belt around her waist. Then she took the most powerful horse she had from the kraal, saddled him and rode out absolutely alone for the city of Old Mexico--900 miles as the trail ran. Apaches, Comanches, Navajos, beset the way. She rode at night and slept by day. The trail was a desert waste of waterless, bare, rocky hills and quicksand rivers and blistering heat. G.o.d, or the Virgin to whom she constantly prayed, or her own dauntless spirit, must have piloted the way; for she reached the old city of Mexico, laid her case before the King's representatives, and won the day. Her sister's death was avenged. The husband was tried and executed: and the Viceroy was deposed. Most of us know of almost similar cases. I think of a man who has repeatedly tried for a federal judgeship in New Mexico, who has literally been guilty of every crime on the human calendar. Yet we don't at risk of life push these cases to retribution. Is that one of the lessons the past has for us? Spanish power fell in New Mexico because there came a time when there was neither justice nor retribution in any of the courts.

Other panoramas there were beneath the age-mellowed beams of the Palace ceiling, panoramas of Comanche and Navajo and Ute and Apache stalking in war feathers before a Spanish governor clad in velvets and laces.

Tradition has it that a Ute was once struck dead in the Governor's presence. Certainly, all four tribes wrought havoc and raid to the very doors of the Palace. Within only the last century, a Comanche chief and his warriors came to Santa Fe demanding the daughter of a leading trader in marriage for the chief's son. The garrison was weak, in spite of fustian and rusty helmets and battered breastplates and velvet doublets and boots half way to the waist--there were seldom more than 200 soldiers, and the pusillanimous Governor counseled deception. He told the Comanche that the trader's daughter had died, and ordered the girl to hide. The only peace that an Indian respects--or any other man, for that matter--is the peace that is a victory. The Indian suspected that the answer was the answer of the coward, a lie, and came back with his Comanche warriors. While the soldiers huddled inside the Palace walls, the town was raided. The trader was murdered and the daughter carried off to the Comanches, where she died of abuse. When these tragedies fell on daughters of the Pilgrims in New England, the Saxon strain of the warrior women in their blood rose to meet the challenge of fate; and they brained their captors with an ax; but no such warrior strain was in the blood of the daughters of Spain. By religion, by nationality, by tradition, the Spanish girl was the purely convent product: womanhood protected by a ten-foot wall. When the wall fell away, she was helpless as a hot-house flower set out amid violent winds.

Diagonally across the Plaza from the Governor's Palace stands the old Fonda, or Exchange Hotel, whence came the long caravans of American traders on the Santa Fe Trail. Behind the Palace about a quarter of a mile, was the Gareta, a sort of combined custom house and prison. The combination was deeply expressive of Spanish rule in those early days, for independent of what the American's white-tented wagon might contain--baled hay or priceless silks or chewing tobacco--a duty of $500 was levied against each mule-team wagon of the American trader. Did a trader protest, or hold back, he was promptly clapped in irons. It was cheaper to pay the duty than buy a release. The walls of both the Fonda and the Gareta were of tremendous thickness, four to six feet of solid adobe, which was hard as our modern cement. In the walls behind the Gareta and on the walls behind the Palace, pitted bullet holes have been found. Beneath the holes was embedded human hair.

Nothing more picturesque exists in America's past than the panorama of this old Santa Fe Trail. Santa Fe was to the Trail what Cairo was to the caravans coming up out of the Desert in Egypt. Twitch.e.l.l, the modern historian, and Gregg, the old chronicler of last century's Trail, give wonderfully vivid pictures of the coming of the caravans to the Palace.

"As the caravans ascended the ridge which overlooks the city, the clamorings of the men and the rejoicings of the bull whackers could be heard on every side. Even the animals seemed to partic.i.p.ate in the humor of their riders. I doubt whether the first sight of Jerusalem brought the crusaders more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing joy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A pool in the Painted Desert whither came thousands of goats and sheep, driven by Navajo girls on horseback]

We talk of the picturesque fur trade of the North, when brigades of birch canoes one and two hundred strong penetrated every river and lake of the wilderness of the Northwest. Let us take a look at these caravan brigades of the traders of the Southwest! Teams were hitched tandem to the white-tented wagons. Drivers did not ride in the wagons. They rode astride mule or horse, with long bull whips thick as a snake skin, which could reach from rear to fore team. I don't know how they do it; but when the drivers lash these whips out full length, they cause a crackling like pistol shots. The owner of the caravan was usually some gentleman adventurer from Virginia or Kentucky or Louisiana or Missouri; but each caravan had its captain to command, and its outriders to scout for Indians. These scouts were of every station in life with morals of as varied aspect as Joseph's coat of many colors. Kit Carson was once one of these scouts. Governor Bent was one of the traders. Stephen B.

Elkins first came to New Mexico with a bull whacker's caravan. In the morning, every teamster would vie with his fellows to hitch up fastest.

Teams ready, he would mount and call back--"All's set." An uproar of whinnying and braying, the clank of chains, and then the captain's shout--"Stretch out," when the long line of twenty or thirty white-tented wagons would rumble out for the journey of thirty to sixty days across the plains. Each wagon had five yoke of oxen, with six or eight extra mule teams behind in case of emergency. About three tons made a load. Twenty miles was a good day's travel. Camping places near good water and pasturage were chosen ahead by the scouts. Wagons kept together in groups of four. In case of attack by Comanche or Ute, these wagons wheeled into a circle for defense with men and beasts inside the extemporized kraal. Campfires were kept away from wagons to avoid giving target to foes. Blankets consisted of buffalo robes, and the rations "hard tack," pork and such game as the scouts and sharpshooters could bring down. A favorite trick of Indian raiders was to wait till all animals were tethered out for pasturage, and then stampede mules and oxen. In the confusion, wagons would be overturned and looted.

As the long white caravans came to their journey's end at Santa Fe, literally the whole Spanish and Indian population crowded to the Plaza in front of the Palace. "Los Americanos! Los Carros! La Caravana!"--were the shouts ringing through the streets; and Santa Fe's perpetual siesta would be awakened to a week's fair or barter. Wagons were lined up at the custom house; and the trader presented himself before the Spanish governor, trader and governor alike dressed in their best regimentals.

Very fair, very soft spoken, very profuse of compliments was the interview; but divested of profound bows and flowery compliments, it ended in the American paying $500 a wagon, or losing his goods. The goods were then bartered at a staggering advance. Plain broadcloth sold at $25 a yard, linen at $4 a yard, and the price on other goods was proportionate. Goods taken in exchange were hides, wool, gold and silver bullion, Indian blankets and precious stones.

Travelers from Mexico to the outside world went by stage or private omnibus with outriders and guards and sharpshooters. Young Spanish girls sent East to school were accompanied by such a retinue of defenders, slaves and servants, as might have attended a European monarch; and a whole bookful of stories could be written of adventures among the young Spanish n.o.bility going out to see the world. The stage fare varied from $160 to $250 far as the Mississippi. Though Stephen B. Elkins went to New Mexico with a bull whacker's team, it was not long before he was sending gold bullion from mining and trading operations out to St. Louis and New York. How to get this gold bullion past the highwaymen who infested the stage route, was always a problem. I know of one old Spanish lady, who yearly went to St. Louis to make family purchases and used to smuggle Elkins' gold out for him in belts and petticoats and disreputable looking old hand bags. Once, when she was going out in midsummer heat, she had a belt of her husband's drafts and Elkins' gold round her waist. The way grew hotter and hotter. The old lady unstrapped the buckskin reticule--looking, for all the world, like a woman's carry-all--and threw it up on top of the stage. An hour later, highwaymen "went through" the pa.s.sengers. Rings, watches, jewels, coin were taken off the travelers; and the mail bags were looted; but the bandits never thought of examining the old bag on top of the stage, in which was gold worth all the rest of the loot.

In those days, gambling was the universal pa.s.sion of high and low in New Mexico; and many a Spanish don and American trader, who had taken over tens of thousands in the barter of the caravan, wasted it over the gaming table before dawn of the next day. The Fonda, or old Exchange Hotel, was the center of high play; but it may as well be acknowledged, the highest play of all, the wildest stakes were often laid in the Governor's Palace.

Luckily, the pa.s.sion for destroying the old has not invaded Santa Fe.

The people want their Palace preserved as it was, is, and ever shall be; and the recent restoration has been, not a reconstruction, but a taking away of all the modern and advent.i.tious. Where modern pillars have been placed under the long front portico, they are being replaced by the old _portal_ type of pillar--the fluted capital across the main column supporting the roof beams. This type of _portal_ has come in such favor in New Mexico that it is being embodied in modern houses for arcades, porches and gardens.

The main entrance of the Palace is square in the center. You pa.s.s into what must have been the ancient reception room leading to an audience chamber on the left. What amazes you is the enormous thickness of these adobe walls. Each window cas.e.m.e.nt is wider than a bench; and an open door laid back is not wider than the thickness of the wall. To-day the reception hall and, indeed, the rooms of the center Palace present some of the finest mural paintings in America. These have been placed on the walls by the Archaeological School of America which with the Historical Society occupies the main portions of the old building. You see drawings of the coming of the first Spanish caravels, of Coronado, of Don Diego de Vargas, who was the Frontenac of the Southwest, reconquering the provinces in 1680-94, about the same time that the great Frontenac was playing his part in French Canada. There are pictures, too, of the caravans crossing the plains, of the coming of American occupation, of the Moki and Hopi and Zuni pueblos, of the Missions of which only ruins to-day mark the sites in the Jemez, at Sandia, and away out in the Desert of Abo.

To the left of the reception room is an excellent art gallery of Southwestern subjects. Here, artists of the growing Southwestern School send their work for exhibition and sale. It is significant that within the last few years prices have gone up from a few dollars to hundreds and thousands. Nausbaum's photographic work of the modern Indian is one of the striking features of the Palace. Of course, there are pictures by Curtis and Burbank and Sharpe and others of the Southwestern School; but perhaps the most interesting rooms to the newcomer, to the visitor, who doesn't know that we have an ancient America, are those where the mural drawings are devoted to the cave dwellers and prehistoric races. These were done by Carl Lotave of Paris out on the ground of the ancient races. In conception and execution, they are among the finest murals in America.

Long ago, the Governor's Palace had twin towers and a chapel. Bells in the old Spanish churches were not tolled. They were struck gong fashion by an attendant, who ascended the towers. These bells were cast of a very fine quality of old copper; and the tone was largely determined by the quality of the cast. Old Mission bells are scarce to-day in New Mexico; and collectors offer as high as $1,500 and $3,000 for the genuine article. Vesper bells played a great part in the life of the old Spanish regime. Ladies might be promenading the Plaza, workmen busy over their tasks, gamblers hard at the wheel and dice. At vesper call, men, women and children dropped to knees; and for a moment silence fell, all but the calling of the vesper bells. Then the bells ceased ringing, and life went on in its noisy stream.

[Ill.u.s.tration: There are streets in Santa Fe where one may see box-like adobe houses beside dwellings of modern architecture]

No account of the Governor's Palace would be complete without some mention of the marvels of dress among the dons and donas of the old regime. Could we see them promenading the Plaza and the Palace as they paraded their gayety less than half a century ago, we would imagine ourselves in some play house of the French Court in its most luxurious days. Indians dressed then as they dress to-day, in bright-colored blankets fastened gracefully round hip and shoulders. Peons or peasants wore serapes, blankets with a slit in the center, over the shoulders.

Women of position wore not hats but the silk _rebozo_ or scarf, thrown over the head with one end back across the left shoulder. On the street, the face was almost covered by this scarf. Presumably the purpose was to conceal charms; but when you consider the combination of dark eyes and waving hair and a scarf of the finest color and texture that could be bought in China or the Indies, it is a question whether that scarf did not set off what it was designed to conceal. About the shawls used as scarfs there is much misconception. These are not of Spanish or Mexican make. They come down in the Spanish families from the days when the vessels of the traders of Mexico trafficked with China and j.a.pan. These old shawls to-day bring prices varying all the way from $200 to $2,000.

The don of fashion dressed even more gayly than his spouse. Jewelry was a pa.s.sion with both men and women; and the finest type of old jewelry in America to-day is to be found in New Mexico. The hat of the don was the wide-brimmed sombrero. Around this was a silver or gold cord, with a gold or silver c.o.c.kade. The jackets were of colored broadcloth with b.u.t.tons of silver or gold, not bra.s.s; but the trousers were at once the glory and the vanity of the wearer. Gold and silver b.u.t.tons ornamented the seams of the legs from hip to knee. There were gold clasps at the garter and gold clasps at the knee. A silk sash with ta.s.seled cords or fringe hanging down one side took the place of modern suspenders.

Leather leggings for outdoor wear were carved or embossed. A serape or velvet cape lined with bright-colored silk completed the costume.

Bridles and horse trappings were gorgeous with silver, the pommel and stirrups being overlaid with it. The bridle was a barbarous silver thing with a bit cruel enough to control tigers; and the rowels of the spurs were two or three inches long.

No, these were not people of French and Spanish courts. They were people of our own Western America less than a century ago; but though they were not people of the playhouse, as they almost seem to us, they are essentially a play-people. The Spaniard of the Southwest lived, not to work, but to play; and when he worked, it was only that he might play the harder. Los Americanos came and changed all that. They turned the Spanish play-world up side down and put work on top. Roam through the Governor's Palace! Call up the old gay life! We undoubtedly handle more money than the Spanish dons and donas of the old days; but frankly--which stand for the more joy out of life; those laughing philosophers, or we modern work-demons?

CHAPTER X

THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE OF SANTA FE (_Continued_)

Of all the traditions clinging round the old Palace at Santa Fe, those connected with Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of New Mexico, are best known and most picturesque. Yearly, for two and a quarter centuries, the people of New Mexico have commemorated De Vargas' victory by a procession to the church which he built in grat.i.tude to Heaven for his success. This procession is at once a great public festival and a sacred religious ceremony; for the image of the Virgin, which De Vargas used when he planted the Cross on the Plaza in front of the Palace and sang the Te Deum with the a.s.sembled Franciscan monks, is the same image now used in the theatrical procession of the religious ceremony yearly celebrated by Indians, Spanish and Americans.

The De Vargas procession is a ceremony unique in America. The very Indians whose ancestors De Vargas' arms subjugated, now yearly reenact the scenes of the struggles of their forefathers to throw off white rule. Young Mexicans, descendants of the very officers who marched with De Vargas in his campaigns of 1692-3-4, take the part of the conquering heroes. Costumes, march, religious ceremonies of thanks, public festival--all have been kept as close to original historic fact as possible.

De Vargas, himself, was to the Southwest what Frontenac was to French Canada--a bluff soldier animated by religious motives, who believed only in the peace that is a victory, put the fear of G.o.d in the hearts of his enemies, and built on that fear a superstructure of reverence and love.

It need not be told that such a character rode rough-shod over official red-tape, and had a host of envious curs barking at his heels. They dragged him down, for a period of short eclipse, these Lilliputian enemies, just as Frontenac's enemies caused his recall by a charge of misusing public funds; but in neither case could the charges be sustained. Bluff warriors, not counting house clerks, were needed; and De Vargas, like Frontenac, came through all charges unscathed.