THE EGYPT OF AMERICA. Once I made a horseback ride from Trinidad, Colorado, to El Paso, following the old trail over the Glorietta mountains to Pueblo de Taos and thence by easy stages to El Paso, Texas, my object being to prospect for placer mines. It is a wild, weird scene, when after crossing the Glorietta range, one finds himself in this storied valley of the Rio Grande, New Mexico, that mysterious land of sunshine, of eternal silence and (may I say) eternal sadness. Sunlight paints the landscapes in rarest tints of blues and greys, heightened by vermillion and bright ochre colorings on cliff and crag, whose silence of ages is broken only by the rumble of the train, to relapse again into its wonted quietude. The land has been asleep for over three hundred years, while the world’s progress has been going on about her. Once she was aroused when the cattle At Taos they have a tradition that at the flood a few faithful Pueblos gathered upon a mountain top and waited long and in vain for the waters to subside. At last a youth of royal blood and a beautiful virgin decorated with brilliant feathers, were let down from the cliff as an offering to the angry Deity. The waters soon fell, and the youth and maiden were transformed into statues of stone. With all the silence and sadness of this region, contentment seems to reign supreme, and if some genius with the pen of Swiftly flows the Rio Grande along its shallow banks, from whence here and there runs an irrigating ditch which waters a patch of corn or vineyard, near the adobe houses which are scattered thickly along the banks of the river, from the Sangre de Christo mountains to the Mexican sea. Here for over three hundred years a semi-Spanish civilization has existed in a sweet contentment to which the Anglo-Saxon race was born a stranger. Here is the Egypt of America, teeming with the traditions of a simple people, content almost with breath alone. The old mission of Las Cruces was among the first built by the Jesuits in this valley. Behind its altar were two crude paintings of Santo Domingo and Santa Rita, and between them the statuettes of the Virgin and St. Joseph. Beneath the whole was a painting, the scene of which the artist had located somewhere on the borderland between heaven and hell. Gilded saints were flying off in one direction while great horned toads and scorpions “I lost it,” replied the Apache, “but you may take it out of my pay.” “Pay! what pay, you sacrilegious toad?” “Why, out of my daily lashes.” “Holy saints protect us!” exclaimed the padre. “Theft, disbelief and the church itself defied! We will have Judaism here next. Away with him to the faggot fires.” Then, as the flames crept around the Apache chained to a stone post, he repented and the father baptised him and agreed to meet him up yonder, but did not offer to put out the fire. As about two hundred and fifty years have passed since then, they have perhaps met and adjusted their differences by this time. Cruel as these old religious zealots may have been at times, they did a world of good, for they semi-civilized the natives. Beside the yellow waters of the Rio Grande and near the Sierra Blanco range, lies El Paso. Its streets were busy with traffic, and tall buildings rose majestically on either side. But the wind sweeps through the mountain pass and the dust storms darken the sky for days at a time. Like all other desert regions the chief boast of its inhabitants is climate and “this exceptionally bad weather only known heretofore to the oldest settler” grows irksome when one has heard it five hundred times in like regions. Around and about El Paso for three hundred miles north, south, east, and west, is desert, and to those who have never seen a desert country it is surprising how all conditions of life are changed. These conditions are harder than in humid countries. In our northern land between Canada and the Gulf, that which sustains life grows in abundance and few people there are who know what it is to be hungry. But here in El Paso there are many of the poorer classes who actually suffer for something to eat. Within thirty minutes the entire scene had changed. I had crossed the river and was in El Paso del Norte, on the Mexican side of the
It was on the plaza here that General Bonito Juarez camped his little force of 150 men while he went to Washington to appeal to this government to enforce the Monroe doctrine in the midst of our own rebellion. When the American ultimatum went forth to France, Napoleon III withdrew his French troops. Then Juarez marched on to the City of Mexico gathering strength as he went. The unfortunate Maximilian fell into his hands and was executed on the “Cerra de las Campus” (The Hill of the Bells), near Queretaro on the 19th of June, 1867. General Bonito Juarez was a full blooded Aztec whom It was a gala day in El Paso del Norte. A company of Rurales from the interior was to contest in a shooting match with the Carbine Rifles and bets were running high. Both sides did some good shooting at 500 yards and the Carbine Rifles won. Bets were paid freely and everybody was in a good humor. I had formed the acquaintance of Captain Esperanza Provincio and at his invitation I fired a few shots, hitting the bull’s eye each time with one of the Mexican carbines. This excited everybody’s attention and soon some Americans offered to bet that I could beat any man they had in their company shooting at 500 yards. The bets were taken and I was pitted against six crack shots belonging to the Carbine Rifles. I won in every instance and received a neat sum for my skill from my American friends who had won the Mexicans’ money. Captain Provincio, not to be outdone in generosity, caused a handsome silver medal to be made which he afterwards presented to me with the compliments of his company. The Military Band from Chihuahua discoursed The Mexican plaza is the national chimney corner, where at evening a band plays wild, weird strains of martial music, and the young gather about the old to hear tales of daring and valor. It is the plaza where the traditions are kept alive and where the young are taught that the very acme of glory in life is the battlefield. The soft effects of moonlight, the plaza with its green trees, fountains, and sauntering of senors and senoritas in the presence of the silvertoned bells of an old cathedral and the weird strains of martial music, form the pleasant remembrances of El Paso del Norte, since named Juarez. In company with a Mexican miner named Martenez I rode westward along the Mexican border for two days, and thence toward the northwest to Gila River, when one morning we saw to the southward a column of smoke ascending. We knew it to be Indian signals and so rode our bronchos into a clump of bushes on the river banks in order to be out of sight. On scanning the plain with my field glass The scouts continued on the pursuit, while we rode away in the direction of Silver City. It was that band of marauding Apaches which we saw crossing the Gila River that furnished the cause for the Geronimo war, which broke out soon afterwards. It was not until March, in 1886, that General Crook captured Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apaches, who escaped from him while they were being taken to Ft. Bowie. The chief and band were recaptured by General Nelson A. Miles in Mexico some months afterwards and sent to Fort Pickens, Florida. Geronimo and fourteen of his band were afterwards taken to Ft. Sill, Indian Territory. Here the cunning old Chief spent most of his time playing monte with the soldiers. |