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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40471 ***
+
+                         ALAMO RANCH
+
+                   _A Story of New Mexico_
+
+                   BY SARAH WARNER BROOKS
+
+    Author of "My Fire Opal," "The Search of Ceres," etc.
+
+    CAMBRIDGE
+    PRIVATELY PRINTED
+    MCMIII
+
+    UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON
+
+    AND SON . CAMBRIDGE . U.S.A.
+
+
+                     TO LEON
+
+    _Across the silence that between us stays,
+      Speak! I should hear it from God's outmost sun,
+    Above Earth's noise of idle blame and praise,--
+      The longed-for whisper of thy dear "Well done!"_
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ALAMO RANCH]
+
+
+
+
+ALAMO RANCH
+
+_A STORY OF NEW MEXICO_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It is autumn; and the last week in November. In New Mexico, this land of
+sunshine, the season is now as kindly as in the early weeks of our
+Northern September.
+
+To-day the sky is one cloudless arch of sapphire! The light breeze
+scarce ruffles a leaf of the tall alamo, the name tree of this ranch.
+Here any holding bigger than a kitchen garden is known as a ranch. The
+alamo, Spanish for poplar, lends here and there its scant, stiff shade
+to this roomy adobe dwelling, with its warm southern frontage and
+half-detached wings. Behind the house irregular out-buildings are
+scattered about.
+
+A commodious corral, now the distinguished residence of six fine Jersey
+cows, lies between the house and the orchard,--a not over-flourishing
+collection of peach, apricot, and plum trees.
+
+Here and there may be seen wide patches of kitchen garden, carefully
+intersected by irrigating ditches.
+
+Near and afar, wide alfalfa fields with their stiff aftermath stretch
+away to the very rim of the mesa, where the cotton-tail makes his home,
+and sage-brush and mesquite strike root in the meagre soil. Cones of
+alfalfa hay stacked here and there outline themselves like giant
+beehives against the soft blue sky; and over all lies the sunny silence
+of a cloudless afternoon with its smiling westering sun.
+
+Basking in this grateful warmth, their splint arm-chairs idly tilted
+against the house-front, the boarders look with sated invalid eyes upon
+this gracious landscape.
+
+Alamo Ranch is a health resort. In this thin, dry air of Mesilla Valley,
+high above the sea level, the consumptive finds his Eldorado. Hither,
+year by year, come these foredoomed children of men to fight for breath,
+putting into this struggle more noble heroism and praiseworthy courage
+than sometimes goes to victory in battle-fields.
+
+Of these combatants some are still buoyed by the hope of recovery;
+others are but hopeless mortals, with the single sad choice of eking out
+existence far from friends and home, or returning to native skies, there
+to throw up hands in despair and succumb to the foe.
+
+Sixteen miles away the Organ Mountains--seeming, in this wonderfully
+clear atmosphere, within but a stone's throw--loom superbly against the
+cloudless sky; great hills of sand are these, surmounted by tall,
+serrated peaks of bare rock, and now taking on their afternoon array in
+the ever-changing light, rare marvels of shifting color,--amethyst and
+violet, rosy pink, creamy gold, and dusky purple.
+
+The El Paso range rises sombrely on the gray distance, and on every hand
+detached sugar-loaf peaks lend their magnificence to the grand
+mesa-range that cordons the Mesilla Valley.
+
+And now, out on the mesa, at first but a speck between the loungers on
+the piazza and the distant mountain view, a single pedestrian, an
+invalid sportsman, comes in sight. As he nears the ranch with the slowed
+step of fatigue, he is heartening himself by the way with a song. When
+the listeners hear the familiar tune,--it is "Home, Sweet Home,"--one of
+them rallying his meagre wind whistles a faint accompaniment to the
+chorus. It is not a success; and with a mirthless laugh, the whistler
+abandons his poor attempt, and, with the big lump in his throat swelling
+to a sob, rises from his chair and goes dejectedly in. A sympathetic
+chord thrills along the tilted piazza chairs.
+
+The discomfited whistler is but newly arrived at Alamo; and his feeble
+step and weary, hollow cough predict that the poor fellow's journey will
+not take him back to the "Sweet Home" of the song, but rather to the
+uncharted country.
+
+And now the invalid sportsman steps cheerily on the piazza.
+
+"Here, you lazy folks," mocks he, holding high his well-filled game-bag,
+"behold the pigeon stew for your supper!" And good-naturedly hailing a
+Mexican chore-boy, lazily propped by a neighboring poplar trunk, he
+cries, "Catch!" and deftly tossing him the game (pigeons from the mesa)
+goes in to put away his gun. When later he returns to the piazza, bathed
+and refreshed, it is as if, in a room dim-lit by tallow candles, the gas
+had suddenly been turned on to a big chandelier.
+
+Seating himself in the vacant arm-chair, he fills a briar-wood pipe.
+Some of the loungers do likewise; and now, while they smoke and chat,
+look at the new-comer, Leonard Starr. Though not robust, he has the
+substantial mien and bearing of one who finds it good to live, and makes
+those about him also find it good. It is not long before most of these
+dispirited loungers are laughing at his lively stories and sallies, and
+cheerily matching them with their own.
+
+Well is it for this troublous world of ours that some of its children
+are "born to turn the sunny side of things to human eyes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It is the middle of December; the Alamo boarders are now well arrived.
+
+First and foremost, Mr. John Morehouse--the one lion of the ranch--makes
+his bow. He is conspicuous for his able research in Archæology, and
+among his fellow boarders is familiarly known as "the Antiquary."
+
+Mr. Morehouse has come to New Mexico in the interest of science; he is
+not, however, a mere dry-as-dust collector of knowledge, and is very
+much inclined to unbend himself to the lighter moods and pursuits of his
+less scholarly fellow-men.
+
+This well-groomed, handsome man of forty is James Morley of Bangor.
+
+He has come to try this healing air for a slight, but persistent, lung
+affection.
+
+Mr. Morley is known to be a man of means, with all the advantages thus
+implied; but all the same, he is given to railing at most things under
+the sun; hence by the boarders he is surreptitiously dubbed "the
+Grumbler." Mr. Morley's growl is a foregone conclusion, and one may
+safely reckon on his bark; but as for his bite, it is simply nowhere.
+
+Already he has manifested a most considerate kindness for this gray-eyed
+little lady from Marblehead, Miss Mattie Norcross,--a sweet-mannered,
+quiet gentlewoman, who is currently reported as scant of filthy lucre,
+and hence compelled to content herself with a cramped, inexpensive
+bedroom for herself and her invalid sister, who has one hopelessly
+diseased lung. This cheery-faced Irishman, who with his shy little wife
+is, for a stubborn bronchial trouble, making the grand tour of the
+world's health resorts, and is now trying New Mexico, is, strange as it
+may seem, a Methodist minister. His name is Patrick Haley. It may be
+said of Mr. Haley that he has the genial temperament indigenous to Green
+Erin, and he has already won golden opinions at Alamo Ranch by the
+considerate brevity of his grace before meat.
+
+Among the invalids attended by their wives are Mr. Bixbee, from Ohio,
+and Mr. Fairlee, from New York City.
+
+Mr. Bixbee has been bidden by his medical dictator to repair his damaged
+vitality by rest and nourishing food. It is predicted that this
+surfeited "lunger," in escaping his Scylla of consumption, bids fair to
+strand upon the Charybdis of liver complaint, since Mrs. Bixbee, in her
+wifely zeal, not only plies him all day long with lunches, but makes
+night hideous by the administration of raw eggs throughout its drowsy
+hours.
+
+Mr. Roger Smith, an over-worked Harvard athlete, is taking as a
+restorative a lazy winter in this restful land. He has also other irons
+in the fire, of which, later, we shall hear more. Roger Smith is known
+in Boston society as one having heaps of money, but badly off for
+pedigree. All the same, he is, in manner and appearance, a gentleman,
+and has distinctly the hall-mark of Beacon Hill. He is here known as the
+"Harvard man."
+
+Also, among the sound-lunged invalids, is Mr. Harry Warren, a brilliant
+Chicago journalist. Mr. Warren is taking a vacation in Mesilla Valley,
+where he is said to be collecting material for future articles, and
+possibly for a book.
+
+The Browns have also two table-boarders from Boston,--Miss Paulina
+Hemmenshaw and her beautiful niece, Louise, a superbly healthy brunette.
+Their friend, Mr. Henry Hilton, during an absence abroad, has lent for
+the winter to these ladies his toy ranch, with its aesthetically
+fashioned dwelling-house.
+
+The Hemmenshaws dine and sup at Alamo Ranch, and the aunt, a
+cooking-school graduate, is known to make at Hilton Ranch for herself
+and niece wonderful blazer breakfasts, consisting mainly of dishes
+new-fangled of name, and eminently trying to mortal digestion. There
+are, besides, some half-dozen male lungers unaccompanied by friends; and
+two impecunious invalids to whom the kind-hearted landlord, George
+Brown, allows bed and board in return for light-choring about the ranch.
+These latter are democratically counted in with the dining-room
+boarders.
+
+Leon Starr, by common consent the "star boarder" of Alamo Ranch, has
+already been presented to the reader. He has taken the large
+two-windowed room on the ground-floor commanding a glorious view of the
+distant Organ Mountains. After getting his breath in this unaccustomed
+altitude, Leon's next care has been for the depressed lungers who daily
+gather on the boarding-house piazza and wonder if life is still worth
+living. To get them outside themselves by cheery good-fellowship, to
+perform for them little homely services, not much in the telling, but
+making their lives a world easier, has been a part of his method for
+uplifting their general tone.
+
+Of an inventive turn of mind, and an amateur mechanic, he has brought
+with him a tiny tool chest; and it soon becomes the family habit to look
+to Leon Starr for general miscellaneous tinkering, as the mending of
+door and trunk locks, the regulating watches and clocks, the adjustment
+of the bedevilled sewing-machine of their good landlady, and the
+restoration of harmonious working to all disgruntled mechanical gear,
+from garret to cellar. He it is who, on rainy days, manufactures denim
+clothes-bags for clumsy-fingered fellows; who fashions from common canes
+gathered on banks of irrigating ditches, photo-frames for everybody, and
+shows them how to arrange the long cane tassels with decorative effect
+above door and window, and how to soften the glare of kerosene lamps by
+making for them relieving shades of rose-colored paper.
+
+Pessimistic indeed is that lunger who, succumbing to the charm of this
+gracious nature, does not feel the cheery lift in his heavy atmosphere.
+
+From the landlord and his wife, both worn by the strain of doing their
+best for chronically discontented people, down to Fang Lee, the Chinese
+chef, Dennis Kearney, the table-waiter, the over-worked Mexican
+house-maids, and the two native chore-boys--one and all rise up to call
+the star boarder blessed.
+
+Out on the mesa the air is finer and brighter than on the lower plane of
+the ranch, and full of the life and stir of moving things,--quail,
+rabbits, and doves.
+
+Leon had at first found the thin air of this altitude somewhat
+difficult; but since time and use have accustomed his lungs to these
+novel atmospheric conditions, shooting on the mesa has become a part of
+his daily programme, and his quail, rabbits, and pigeons prove a
+toothsome contribution to the already excellent ranch table.
+
+A small, shy Mexican herd-boy, pasturing his lean goats on the mesa,
+gradually makes friends with the tall, kindly sportsman. As they have
+between them but these two mutually intelligible words, _bueno_ (good)
+and _mucho calor_ (very warm), their conversation is circumscribed. Kind
+deeds are, however, more to the point than words, and go without the
+saying; and when Leon instructed the ragged herd-boy in the use of his
+bow, and made and weighted his arrows for him, he _understood_, and
+became his devoted henchman, following in his path all through the
+week-day tramps, and on Sundays coming to the ranch with clean face and
+hands to adore his fetich, and watch, with admiring eyes, his novel
+works and ways.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+After a protracted interval of tranquil sunshine, a stormy wind came
+blustering from the west, bringing to Mesilla Valley, in its wintry
+train, sunless days, light flurries of snow, and general dreariness.
+
+The boarders, weather-bound and dull, grew sullenly mutinous; and on the
+third of these stormy days, gathering in the ranch parlor after the
+mid-day meal, their discontent found vent in banning right and left this
+"land of sun, silence, and adobe."
+
+"Beastly weather!" muttered the Grumbler, drawing into the stove with a
+discontented shiver.
+
+"A precious sample, this, of your fine climate, Brown," jeered Bixbee,
+turning mockingly to the disheartened landlord, who, reckless of
+expense, commanded of the chore-boy fresh relays of fuel, and
+incontinently crammed the parlor air-tight, already red-hot.
+
+"I say, fellows," drolled the Harvard man, "let's make tracks for
+Boston, and round up the winter with furnace heat and unlimited water
+privileges, as the house-broker has it."
+
+"And with cut-throat plumbers thrown in," suggested the Grumbler with a
+malicious grin.
+
+"See here, you folks, draw it mild," laughed the star boarder, crossing
+the room with a finger between the leaves of a volume which he had been
+reading by the dim afternoon light of this lowering day. "Here, now, is
+something that fits your case to a T. Let me read you how they doctored
+your complaint in these parts, æons before you were born."
+
+"Anything for a change," muttered Bixbee, and, with the general consent,
+Leon read the following:
+
+"'When the people came out of the cold, dark womb of the underworld,
+then the great sun rose in the heavens. In it dwelt Payatuma, making his
+circuit of the world in a day and a night. He saw that the day was light
+and warm, the night dark and cold. Hence there needed to be both summer
+and winter people.
+
+"'He accordingly apportioned some of each to every tribe and clan, and
+thus it is down to the present day. Then those above (that is, the
+Sun-father and the Moon-mother), mindful lest the people on their long
+journey to the appointed abiding-place succumb to weariness and fall by
+the way, made for them a koshare, a delight-maker. His body was painted
+in diagonal sections of black and white, and his head, in lieu of the
+regulation feather-decorations, was fantastically arrayed in withered
+corn-leaves.
+
+"'This koshare began at once to dance and tumble. Then the people
+laughed, and were glad. And ever from that day, in their wanderings in
+search of a satisfactory settling-place in the solid centre of the big
+weary world, the koshare led them bravely and well.
+
+"'He it was who danced and jested to make happiness among the people.
+His it was to smile on the planted maize till it sprouted and flowered
+in the fertile bottoms, to beam joyously on the growing fruit, that it
+might ripen in its season.
+
+"'From that day there have been delight-makers in all the Pueblo tribes.
+The koshare became in time with them an organization, as the
+Free-masons, or the Knights of Pythias, with us. This necessity, we are
+told, arose from the fact that among the Pueblos there were summer
+people who enjoy the sunshine, and winter people,--people who
+determinedly prefer to live in the dark and cold.'
+
+"Is it not so," said Leon, turning down a leaf and closing his book,
+"with every people on the face of the earth?
+
+"Is not the 'delight-maker,'--the koshare,--under various names and
+guises, still in demand? It has struck me," continued he, looking
+quizzically at this disgruntled assemblage, "that the koshare might be
+an acceptable addition to our despondent circle."
+
+"Amen!" fervently responded the Methodist minister.
+
+"Right you are," said the Harvard man. "Write me as one who approves the
+koshare!"
+
+"Yes! yes!" eagerly exclaimed approving voices. "Let us have the koshare
+here and at once!"
+
+"A capital move," said Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw (born and reared in the
+climatic belt of clubdom, and regent of a Chapter of Daughters of the
+Revolution). "Let us have a Koshare Club."
+
+"Good!" echoed Mrs. Fairlee, among her intimates surnamed "the Pourer,"
+because of her amiable readiness to undertake for her friends the
+helpful office that among afternoon tea-circles has been distinguished
+by that name. "We might give afternoon teas to the members."
+
+"And why not have recitations, with humorous selections?" bashfully
+suggested the gray-eyed school-mistress, who rejoiced in a fine-toned
+voice and in a diploma from the School of Oratory.
+
+"Yes, indeed; and music, acting, and dancing, and all manner of high
+jinks," exclaimed Miss Louise, who, an accomplished musician, and
+distinguished for her amateur acting, with her superb health and
+unfailing flow of spirits, might be counted in as a born koshare.
+
+"And we might unite improvement with diversion, and have, now and then,
+a lecture, to give interest to our club," suggested Mrs. Bixbee; and
+here she looked significantly at Mr. Morehouse, "the Antiquary," who as
+a lecturer was not unknown to fame.
+
+"Lectures," observed the Minister, "though not strictly kosharean,
+would be highly entertaining, and we can, no doubt, count upon our
+friend, Mr. Morehouse, to give us the result of some of his research in
+Mexican Antiquities."
+
+The Antiquary, with a smile, accepted the part assigned him by his
+fellow-boarder. Here the boarders went to supper, after which the more
+sleepy sought their beds. The evening blew stormily in; but, gathered
+about the centre table in the warm parlor, the leading spirits of Alamo
+Ranch bade the storm go by, while they inaugurated the Club of The New
+Koshare.
+
+The star boarder was chosen president. The Minister was elected
+vice-president, Miss Paulina secretary, and the Harvard man treasurer.
+These preliminaries well arranged, a programme was voted on, and by
+general approval carried.
+
+Mrs. Fairlee--the Pourer--was to give to the club-members a weekly
+afternoon tea. An entertainment open to the entire household was, on
+every Thursday evening, to be given in the ranch dining-room by the
+Koshare, consisting of music, tableaux, and recitations. A
+shooting-match, under the direction of Leon, was to come off weekly on
+the grounds of the establishment. There should be among the clubbists a
+fund collected for magazines; and on fortnightly Saturday evenings Mr.
+Morehouse promised to give them lectures, the result of his antiquarian
+researches in Mexico, New and Old; and during this course papers and
+talks relating to this subject should supplement his own.
+
+"The Pueblo," commented the Grumbler, "would not have found magazines
+strikingly kosharean; let us by all means have them," and suiting deed
+to word, he subscribed to the book-fund on the spot, and paid
+surreptitiously the subscription of the little school-ma'am, who had
+previously withdrawn in the interest of her invalid sister.
+
+In this fashion was inaugurated "The New Koshare" of Mesilla Valley;
+thereafter the Hemmenshaws bundled themselves in winter wraps and,
+handed into their vehicle by the Harvard man, set out in the storm for
+their ride to Hilton Ranch, and the Koshare betook themselves to rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+On the morrow the sun shone warm and bright, and on the mesa, and on all
+the desert-stretches of mesquite and sage-brush, on the broad alfalfa
+fields and outlying acres of Alamo Ranch, there was no longer a flake of
+snow.
+
+Early in this sunny day the star boarder and the Pourer, driven by a
+leisurely chore-boy, might have been seen taking their way to Las
+Cruces, the nearest village and postal centre, intent on the procurement
+of sundry wafers, biscuit, and other edibles pertaining to an afternoon
+tea.
+
+El Paso, the Texan border-town, some forty miles distant, is properly
+the emporium of that region. Between it and Las Cruces lies a stretch of
+desert more barrenly forlorn than the Long Island pine-lands, since it
+is totally void of forest growth, and has but here and there a sprinkle
+of mesquite-bushes about three feet in height, the rest being bare
+sand-ridges.
+
+At El Paso one may ride in street cars, luxuriate in rain-proof
+dwellings, lighted by electricity, and pretty with lawns and
+flower-pots. But even at its best, modern civilization, with its push
+and bustle, ill becomes the happy-go-lucky native Mexican sunning
+himself in lazy content against the adobe of his shiftily built
+dwelling.
+
+In a land of well-nigh perpetual blue sky, why need mortal man scramble
+to make hay while the sun shines? Yesterday has already taken care of
+itself. To-day is still here, and always there is _mañana_--to-morrow.
+
+As for our own upstart civilization, in this clime of ancient Pueblo
+refinements one must own that it takes on the color of an impertinence,
+and as incongruously exhibits itself as a brand-new patch on a long-worn
+garment.
+
+But to return to Las Cruces, which is "fearfully and wonderfully made."
+To look at the houses one might well fancy that the pioneer settlers had
+folded their hands and prayed for dwellings, and when the answering
+shower of mud and adobe fell, had contentedly left it where it stuck.
+All these structures are one-storied, and square-built; each has its one
+door, a window or two, and a dumpy roof, fashioned for the most part of
+wattles, for, as it seldom rains here, the Las Crucean has no
+troublesome prejudice in favor of water-tight roofs. When the sun shines
+he is all right; and when it rains, he simply moves from under the drip.
+Here, among confectionery that had long since outlived its desirability,
+among stale baker's cookies and flinty ginger snaps, the Koshare
+commissariat foraged discouragedly for the afternoon tea.
+
+Duly supplied with these time-honored sweets, Leon and the Pourer, thus
+indifferently provisioned, turned their faces homeward, at such moderate
+pace as seemed good in the eyes of an easy-going Mexican pony and his
+lazy Indian driver.
+
+On the afternoon of that day Mrs. Bixbee, in her airy bed-chamber,
+where the folding-bed in the day-time masqueraded as a black walnut
+bookcase, gave the first Koshare afternoon tea.
+
+Mrs. Fairlee poured from a real Russian Samovar brought over from the
+Hilton Ranch for this grand occasion. Somewhat to the general surprise,
+the Grumbler made his bow to the hostess in evening clothes, and though
+not exuberantly Koshare, he was in an unwontedly gracious mood;
+partaking with polite zest of the stale chocolates, tough cookies, and
+flinty ginger snaps; munching long-baked Albert biscuit; serenely
+bolting puckery Oolong tea; and even handing the cups,--large and
+substantial ones, kindly furnished from their landlady's pantry,--and
+commending their solidity and size as far preferable to the Dresden and
+Japanese "thimbles" commonly appearing on afternoon tea-tables. As for
+the Pourer, it must be recorded that her grace, facility, and charm of
+manner gave even stone china tea-cups an air of distinction, and lent to
+Oolong tea and stale cakes a flavor of refinement. It was on Monday that
+this function came off successfully.
+
+The next Koshare festivity in regular order was the shooting-match.
+
+Leon, who had inherited from some Nimrod of his race, long since turned
+to dust, that _true eye_ and steady hand which make gunning a success,
+was here master of ceremonies as well as contributor of prizes.
+
+The first of these, a pair of gold sleeve-links, he, himself, easily
+won, and subsequently donated to Dennis the dudish table-waiter. Of the
+five prizes, two others were won by the two impecunious lungers, one by
+the Harvard man, and another by the Antiquary. The shooting-match,
+enjoyed as it was by the near population of Mesilla Valley, proved a big
+success, and weekly grew in grace with the aborigines as having a fine
+flavor of circus shows and Mexican bull-fights, and was considered by
+the Koshare as one of their happiest hits.
+
+Equally successful was the Thursday entertainment, held in the big
+dining-room, under the auspices of the landlord and his wife, with the
+cook, waiter, maids, and chore-boys gathered about the open door.
+
+It consisted of vocal and instrumental music, and recitations in prose
+and rhyme; and, at a late hour, wound up with a bountiful supper
+contributed to the occasion by the generous landlord.
+
+Miss Hemmenshaw, the star performer, gave, with admirable Rachelesque
+gesture and true dramatic fire, "The Widow of the Grand Army," recited
+with exquisite delicacy Shelley's "Cloud," and sent shivers down the
+backs of the entire assemblage, by a realistic presentation of
+Rossetti's "Sister Helen." The grey-eyed school-marm recited with
+genuine "School of Oratory" precision and finish "Barbara Frietchie,"
+Holmes' "Chambered Nautilus," Longfellow's "Sandalphon," and "Tom
+O'Connor's Cat." Leon read, with admirable humor, some of Mr. Dooley's
+best; and the Harvard man brought down the house with Kipling's "Truce
+of the Bear."
+
+There was some fine piano and banjo playing, and the singing of duets;
+and the Journalist rendered, in his exquisite tenor, Ben Jonson's rare
+old love-song, "Drink to me only with thine eyes."
+
+"Strange," commented the Antiquary (who in his miscellaneous mental
+storage had found room for some fine old Elizabethan plays), turning to
+Miss Hemmenshaw in the pause of the song, "Ben Jonson is dust these
+three hundred years, and still his verses come singing down the ages,
+keeping intact their own immortal flavor. The song-maker's is, indeed,
+an art that 'smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust.' Well might they
+write him, 'O rare Ben Jonson.'"
+
+"And how exquisitely," responded the lady, "is the air married to the
+words!" And now the Minister brought forward his Cremona. He was a
+finished violinist, with a touch that well-nigh amounted to genius. All
+praised his performance. At its close the Grumbler, in an aside to the
+Antiquary, thus delivered himself:--
+
+"To _some_, God giveth common-sense; to _others_, to play the fiddle!"
+
+From the entry audience the fiddler won rousing rounds of applause, and
+Dennis, the waiter, ventured on the subdued shuffle of an Irish jig.
+
+This it was that suggested to the Koshare an impromptu dance, and
+thereupon the young people straightway took the floor. The Minister,
+kindly oblivious of his cloth, fiddled on; Miss Paulina called off the
+figures, and so, merrily, ended the first Koshare evening
+entertainment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+As it is not proposed to give this record of the doings of the "New
+Koshare" the circumstantiality of a diary, the chronicler may be allowed
+to include the ensuing teas, shooting-matches, and all the lighter
+kosharean festivities in the one general and final statement, that they
+each came off duly and successfully; and leaving their details
+"unhonored and unsung," proceed to a more extended account of the
+Saturday evening entertainments,--as all members of the club were
+invited to contribute to these evenings, and it was expected that the
+Minister would, from the storehouse of his travelling experience,
+contribute liberally to their delectability; and that the Journalist
+(who naturally thought in paragraphs, and, like the fairy who "spoke
+pearls," conversed in exquisitely fashioned sentences) would supplement
+the papers of the Antiquary by his own brilliant talks.
+
+And so it was that on the initial Saturday evening, with a full
+attendance and great expectations, the Koshare found themselves
+convened, the president in the chair, the secretary with notebook in
+hand, and all in dignified attention.
+
+The Antiquary--with this apt quotation from Cumming's "Land of Poco
+Tiempo"--began his first lecture before the club.
+
+"'New Mexico,'" quoted he, "'is the anomaly of the Republic. It is a
+century older in European civilization than the rest, and several
+centuries older still in a happier semi-civilization of its own.
+It had its little walled cities of stone before Columbus had
+grandparents-to-be; and it has them yet.'
+
+"There are," stated Mr. Morehouse, "three typical races in New Mexico.
+The American interpolation does not count as a type.
+
+"Of Pueblo Indians there are nine thousand, 'peaceful, home-loving, and
+home-dwelling tillers of the soil.' Then, here, and in Arizona, there
+are about twenty thousand Navajo Indians,--nomad, horse-loving,
+horse-stealing vagrants of the saddle, modern Centaurs. Then come the
+Apaches, an uncounted savage horde, whose partial civilization has been
+effected by sheer force of arms, and inch by inch: who accept the
+reservation with but half a heart, and break bounds at every
+opportunity. Last of all come the Mexicans, shrunken descendants of the
+Castilian world-finders; living almost as much against the house as in
+it; ignorant as slaves, and more courteous than kings; poor as Lazarus,
+and more hospitable than Croesus; and Catholics from A to izzard.
+
+"The Navajos and Apaches," said Mr. Morehouse, "have neither houses nor
+towns; the Pueblos have nineteen compact little cities, and the Mexicans
+several hundred villages, a part of which are shared by the invader.
+
+"'The numerous sacred dances of the Pueblos,' says Cummings, 'are by far
+the most picturesque sights in America, and the least viewed by
+Americans, who never found anything more striking abroad. The mythology
+of Greece and Rome is less than theirs in complicated comprehensiveness;
+and they are a far more interesting ethnological study than the tribes
+of inner Africa, and less known of by their white countrymen.'
+
+"The Pueblos of New Mexico," explained the Antiquary, "are by no means
+to be confounded with the Toltecs or Aztecs. It is, however, barely
+possible that in prehistoric ages the race in possession of Mexico may
+have had some tribal characteristics of the latter-day Pueblo. As of
+that remote time, there is not even a traditionary record; this
+supposition is absolutely conjectural.
+
+"By investigation and comparison it has, however, been proved that the
+Pueblos have racial characteristics connecting them with some mysterious
+stage of human life even older than that of the more barbarous Toltecs
+or Aztecs.
+
+"This race has from time immemorial had its book of Genesis. It is not,
+like that of the Hebrew, a written record, but has been orally handed
+down, and with careful precision, beginning with their original
+emergence, as half-formed human beings, from the dark of the mystic
+underworld of 'Shipapu' to the world of light.
+
+"After the fashion of most barbarous races, the Pueblo appears
+originally to have 'pitched his moving tent' in various parts of Mexico;
+and it may be inferred that he endured many casualities before settling
+himself in life. It was to tide over this trying epoch in his existence
+that 'Those Above,' according to tradition, made for the tribes that
+quaint 'Delight-Monger,' with whom we have already made acquaintance,
+who led them in their wanderings from the womb of Shipapu to the solid
+centre of their world; but, as has been already stated, this record,
+going back to an indefinite period of time, and having only the dubious
+authority of folk-lore, is only of traditional value.
+
+"The Pueblo, no less than the Aztec, is the most religious of human
+beings. His ceremonial, like that of the age of Montezuma, is
+wonderfully and minutely elaborated; and though originating in a
+civilization less splendid and refined, it is really less barbarous,
+since its rites have never, like those of the Aztec, included the
+horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalism.
+
+"The Pueblo, since his exit from the womb of mother Earth, seems to have
+given his principal attention to the cultivation of its soil. All the
+same, he appears never to have shirked the less peaceful
+responsibilities of his tribe,--putting on his war-paint at the shortest
+notice, to settle the quarrels of his clan.
+
+"Although like most men of savage birth and breeding, cruel in warfare,
+he seems never to have been abstractedly blood-thirsty, never to have
+killed, like his ever-belligerent neighbor, the Apache, purely for
+killing's sake; but, his quarrel once ended, and the present security of
+his clan well achieved, he has contentedly returned to the peaceful ways
+of life; diligently sowing, weeding, and harvesting his crops of maize,
+melons, squashes, and beans, and--ever mindful of the propitiative
+requirements of 'Those Above'--taking careful heed of his religious
+duties.
+
+"For a succinct account of the Pueblo cave (or cliff) dwellers," said
+the Antiquary, "I am largely indebted to Bandelier, from whose valuable
+Pueblo researches I shall often take the liberty to quote.
+
+"The imperfectly explored mountain range skirting the Rio Grande del
+Norte is picturesquely grand.
+
+"Facing the river, the foundation of the chain is entirely volcanic.
+
+"Colossal rocks form the abrupt walls of the gorges between these
+mountains, and are often so soft and friable that, in many places they
+were easily scooped out with the most primitive tools, or even detached
+with the fingers alone.
+
+"In these gorges, through many of which run unfailing streams of water,
+often expanding to the proportions of regular valleys, the Pueblo Indian
+raised the modest crop that satisfied his vegetable craving.
+
+"As it is easier to excavate dwellings than to pile up walls in the open
+air, the aboriginal Mexican's house-building effort was mostly confined
+to underground construction. He was, in fact, a 'cave-dweller,' yet
+infinitely of more advanced architectural ideas than our own remote
+forbears of Anglo Saxon cave-dwelling times.
+
+"Most of these residences might boast of from three to four rooms. They
+were arranged in groups, or clusters, and some of them were several
+stories high.
+
+"Rude ladders were used for mounting to the terrace or roof of each
+successive story. The Pueblo had, literally, a hearthstone in his
+primitive home. His fireplace was supplied with a hearth of
+pumice-stone. A rudely built flue, made of cemented rubble, led to a
+circular opening in the front wall of his cave-dwelling. Air-holes
+admitted their scanty light to these dusky apartments, in which there
+were not only conveniences for bestowing wearing-apparel, but niches for
+ornamental pottery, precious stones, and the like Indian bric-à-brac.
+The ground-floor entrance was a rude doorway closed by a hide, or mat.
+Plaited mats of Yucca leaves, and deer-hide, by day rolled up in corners
+of the sleeping-apartments, served for mattresses at night. A thick
+coating of mud, washed with blood, and carefully smoothed, gave to the
+floor a glossy effect. Some of the rooms are known to have been in
+dimension ten feet by fourteen. Their walls were whitewashed with burnt
+gypsum.
+
+"Though the time when these traditional cliff-dwellers wooed and wed,
+lived and died in the Rialto vale is long, long gone by, the ruins of
+their homes may still be seen. Some of them are tolerably intact; others
+are crumbled away to mere shapeless ruins.
+
+"And now, having described their dwellings, let us note some of the most
+marked and interesting characteristics of the men and women who made in
+them their homes.
+
+"We are apt," said the Antiquary, "to accord to our more enlightened
+civilization the origin of communism; yet, antedating by ages our
+latter-day socialistic fads, the communal idea enthused this unlettered
+people, and to a certain extent seems to have been successfully carried
+out.
+
+"Let not the strong-minded Anglo-Saxon woman plume herself upon the
+discovery of the equality of the sexes. While our own female suffragists
+were yet unborn, the Pueblo wife had been accorded the inalienable right
+to lord it over her mankind.
+
+"Among the Mexican cliff-dwellers, 'woman's rights' seem to have been as
+indigenous to the soil as the piñon and the prickly pear.
+
+"In the primitive Pueblo domicile, the wife appears, by tribal consent,
+to have been absolutely 'cock of the walk.' The husband had no rights as
+owner or proprietor of the family mansion, and, as an inmate, was
+scarcely more than tolerated.
+
+"The wife, in those ever-to-be-regretted days, not only built and
+furnished the house,--contributed to the kitchen the soup pot, water
+jars, and other primitive domestic appliances,--but figured as sole
+proprietor of the entire establishment.
+
+"The Pueblo woman, though married, still had, with her children, her
+holding in her own clan. In case of her death, the man's home being
+properly with _his_ clan, he must return to it.
+
+"The wife was not allowed to work in the fields. Each man tilled the
+plot allotted him by his clan. The crops, once housed, were controlled
+by the woman, as were the proceeds of communal hunts and fisheries.
+
+"The Pueblos had their system of divorce. It goes without saying that it
+was not attended by the red-tape complications of our time. As the
+husband's continuance under the family roof-tree depended absolutely on
+his acceptability to the wife, at any flagrant marital breach of good
+behavior she simply refused to recognize him as her lord. In vain he
+protested, stormed, and menaced; the outraged better half bade him _go_,
+and he _went_! Thus easily and informally were Pueblo marriages
+dissolved; and, this summary transaction once well concluded, each party
+had the right to contract a second marriage.
+
+"The Pueblo Indian is historically known as a Catholic; that is to say,
+he told his beads, crossed his brow with holy water, and duly and
+devoutly knelt at the confessional. This done, he tacitly reserved to
+himself the privilege of surreptitiously clinging to the Paganism of his
+forbears, and zealously paid his tithe of observances at the ancient
+shrine of 'the Sun Father' and 'the Moon Mother.'
+
+"Some of the Pueblo tribes are said still to retain the use of that
+ancient supplicating convenience, 'the prayer-stick.'
+
+"'Prayer-sticks, or plumes,'" explained the Antiquary, "are but painted
+sticks tufted with down, or feathers, and, by the simple-minded Indian,
+supposed especially to commend him to the good graces and kindly offices
+of 'Those Above.' In a certain way, the aboriginal prayer-stick seems to
+have been a substitute for an oral supplication.
+
+"The Pueblo, pressed for time, might even forego the hindering
+ceremonial of verbal request, adoration, or thanksgiving, and hurriedly
+deposit, as a votive offering to his easily placated gods, this tufted
+bit of painted wood; and, furthermore, since prayer-sticks were not
+always within reach, it was permitted him in such emergencies to gather
+two twigs, and, placing these crosswise, hold them in position by a rock
+or stone. And this childish make-shift passed with his indulgent gods
+for a prayer!
+
+"The most trivial commonplace of existence had, with the superstitious
+Pueblo, its religious significance; and it would seem to have been
+incumbent on him literally to 'pray without ceasing.' Hence the
+prayer-plume, or its substitute, was, with him, one of the necessities
+of life. Time would fail me to tell of the ancient elaborate religious
+rites and superstitions of the Mexican Indian; to recount his latter-day
+ceremonials, wherein Pagan dances, races, and sports are like the jumble
+of a crazy quilt, promiscuously mixed in with Christian festas and holy
+saint-days; and indeed the subject is too large for my sketchy handling.
+It may not, however, be amiss to notice the yearly celebration of the
+festival of San Estevan. It may be still witnessed, and seems to have
+been the original Harvest-home of the Mexican Indian, the observance of
+which has been handed down in various ways from all times, and among all
+peoples, and is probably the parent of our Thanksgiving holiday.
+
+"The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to
+commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft
+upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day
+names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the
+guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial.
+
+"It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are
+dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican
+confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief
+account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful
+assertion of Cummings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who
+are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of
+Washington; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed
+residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and
+irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been
+beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a
+hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was
+conceived.'
+
+"This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no
+means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the
+untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back of his steed, or the
+fierce Apache, murderous and cruel.
+
+"We must not," said Mr. Morehouse, "take leave of the Pueblo, without
+some reference to the great flat-topped, slop-sided chain of rock-tables
+that throughout the length and breadth of his territory rises from the
+sandy plains, the most famous and best explored of which is known as 'La
+Mesa Encantada,'--'the Enchanted Mesa.'
+
+"According to tradition the Mesa Encantada gains its romantic name from
+an event which centuries ago--declares the legend--destroyed the town,
+then a well-populated stronghold of the Acomas. As a prelude to this
+legend, let me state that the Pueblo cliff-dwellers often perched their
+habitations on lofty, sheer-walled, and not easily accessible mesas, a
+natural vantage-ground from which they might successfully resist their
+enemies, the nomadic and predatory tribes formerly over-running the
+country.
+
+"The steep wall of the Acoma Mesa, with its solitary trail, surmounted
+by means of hand and foot holes pecked in the solid rock, was so well
+defended that a single man might keep an army at bay. What fear, then,
+should these Acomas have of their enemies?
+
+"The Acomas, like other Pueblo Indians, have from time immemorial been
+tillers of the soil.
+
+"From the fertile sands of their valley and its tributaries they won by
+patient toil such harvests of corn, beans, squashes, and cotton as
+secured them a simple livelihood; and 'their granaries,' it is asserted,
+'were always full enough to enable them, if need be, to withstand a
+twelvemonth's siege.' How long the top of Katzimo, the site of the
+Enchanted Mesa, had been inhabited when the catastrophe recorded in the
+legend befell, no man may say, not even the elders of the tribe; this
+much is, however, known,--the spring-time had come. The sun-priest had
+already proclaimed from the housetops that the season of planting was at
+hand. The seeds from last year's harvest had been gathered from the
+bins; planting-sticks had been sharpened, and all made ready for the
+auspicious day when the seer should further announce the time of
+repairing to the fields. On that day (so runs the tale), down the ragged
+trail, at early sunrise, clambered the busy natives; every one who was
+able to force a planting-stick into the compact soil, or lithe enough to
+drive away a robber crow, hurried to the planting. Only a few of the
+aged and ailing remained on the mesa.
+
+"While the planters worked in the hot glare of the valley below, the sun
+suddenly hid his face in angry clouds. The busy planters hastened their
+work, while the distant thunder muttered and rolled about them. Suddenly
+the black dome above them was rent as by a glittering sword, and down
+swept the torrent, until the entire valley became a sheet of flood. The
+planters sought shelter in the slight huts of boughs and sticks from
+which the crops are watched.
+
+"The elders bodingly shook their heads. Never before had the heavens
+given vent to such a cataract.
+
+"When the sudden clouds as suddenly dispersed, and the sun-lit crest of
+Katzimo emerged from the mist, the toilers trudged toward their mountain
+home. Reaching the base of the trail, they found their pathway of the
+morning blocked by huge, sharp-edged pieces of stone, giving mute
+testimony of the disaster to the ladder-trail above.
+
+"The huge rock mass, which had given access to the cleft by means of the
+holes pecked in the trail-path, had in the great cloud-burst become
+freed from the friable wall, and thundered down in a thousand
+fragments, cutting off communication with the mesa village. The Acomas,
+when asked why their ancestors made no desperate effort to reach the
+sufferers whose feeble voices were calling to them from the summit for
+succor, but left their own flesh and blood to perish by slow starvation,
+gravely shook their heads.
+
+"The ban of enchantment had already, for these superstitious pagans,
+fallen upon the devoted table-land; it had become 'La Mesa Encantada.'
+
+"The publication by Mr. Charles F. Lummis, who resided for several years
+at the pueblo of Iselta, of the story of Katzimo, the tradition of which
+was repeated to him by its gray-haired priests some twelve years ago,
+aroused the interest of students of southwestern ethnology in the
+history of 'La Mesa Encantada,' and, subsequently, Mr. F. W. Hodge was
+directed by the Bureau of American Ethnology, of the Smithsonian
+Institute, to scale the difficult height of this giant mountain, for the
+purpose of supplementing the evidence already gained, of its sometime
+occupancy as a Pueblo town. His party found decided evidence of a former
+occupancy of the mesa, such as fragments of extremely ancient
+earthenware, a portion of a shell bracelet, parts of two grooved stone
+axes, lichen-flecked with age. Here, too, was an unfeathered
+prayer-stick, a melancholy reminder of a votive offering made, at the
+nearest point of accessibility, to 'Those Above.'
+
+"'When I consider,' says Mr. Hodge, in his charming paper, 'The
+Enchanted Mesa,' published in the 'Century Magazine,' some three or
+four years ago, 'that the summit of Katzimo, where the town was, has
+long been inaccessible to the Indians, that it has been swept by winds,
+and washed by rains for centuries, until scarcely any soil is left on
+its crest, that well-defined traces of an ancient ladder trail may still
+be seen pecked on the rocky wall of the very cleft through which the
+traditionary pathway wound its course; and, above all, the large number
+of very ancient potsherds in the earthy talus about the base of the
+mesa, which must have been washed from above, the conclusion is
+inevitable that the summit of 'La Mesa Encantada' was inhabited prior to
+1540, when the present Acoma was discovered by Coronado, and that the
+last vestige of the village itself has long been washed or blown over
+the cliff.'"
+
+With this account of the Enchanted Mesa, Mr. Morehouse, amid general
+applause, ended his interesting paper on the Pueblo Indians; and after a
+short discussion by the Club of the ancient and modern characteristics
+of these remarkable aborigines, the Koshare, well pleased with the
+success of its endeavor to combine improvement with delight, adjourned
+to the next Monday in January.
+
+Little dreamed Roger Smith as, that night, after the Club entertainment,
+he handed the Hemmenshaw ladies to their wagon, for the return ride to
+Hilton Ranch, that the very next week he was to undertake, on their
+behalf, a hand-to-hand encounter with a blood-thirsty Apache. Yet so was
+it ordained of Fate.
+
+It has already been stated that these ladies were but day-boarders at
+Alamo Ranch, occupying, together with Sholto, a Mexican
+man-of-all-work, the Hilton Ranch, a good mile distant from the
+boarding-house.
+
+Louise Hemmenshaw, usually in exuberant health, was ill with a severe
+influenza. It was the third and cumulative day of this disease. Sholto
+had already been despatched to Brown's for the dinner; Miss Paulina had,
+in this emergency, undertaken to turn off the breakfasts and suppers
+from her chafing-dish.
+
+After replenishing, from the wood basket, the invalid's chamber fire,
+Miss Paulina administered her teaspoonful of bryonia, gave a settling
+shake to her pillow, and hurried down to fasten the back door behind
+Sholto.
+
+Lingering a moment at the kitchen window, the good lady put on her
+far-off glasses for a good look across the mesa, stretching--an unbroken
+waste of sage-brush and mesquite-bush--from the Hilton kitchen garden to
+the distant line of the horizon.
+
+As she quietly scanned the nearer prospect, Miss Paulina's heart made a
+sudden thump beneath her bodice, and quickened its pulses to fever-time;
+for there, just within range of her vision, was the undoubted form of an
+Apache savage, clad airily in breech-clout, and Navajo blanket. Skulking
+warily along the mesa, he gained the garden fence and sprang, at a
+bound, over the low paling. For a moment the watcher stood paralyzed
+with wonder and dismay.
+
+Meantime, under cover of a rose-trellis, the Apache, looking bad enough
+and cunning enough for any outrage, coolly made a reconnoisance of the
+premises. This done, still on all-fours, he gained the bulkhead of the
+small dark vegetable cellar beneath the kitchen. It chanced to have been
+inadvertently left open.
+
+With a satisfied grunt (and eschewing the paltry convenience of steps)
+he bounded at once into its dusky depths.
+
+Summoning her failing courage, this "Daughter of the Revolution"
+resolutely tiptoed out the front door, and, with her heart in her mouth,
+whisking round the corner of the devoted house, shot into place the
+stout outside bolt of the bulkhead door.
+
+This feat accomplished, she made haste to gain the safe shelter of the
+adobe dwelling. She next looked well to the bolt fastening the trap-door
+at the head of the ladder-like stairway leading perilously from the
+kitchen to the dim region below, where the Apache might now be heard
+bumping his head against the floor-planks, in a fruitless endeavor to
+discover some outlet, from this underground apartment, to the family
+circle above. With the frightful possibility of a not distant escape of
+her prisoner, the good lady lifted her heart in silent prayer, and
+hurrying promptly to the chamber of her niece, gave a saving punch to
+the fire, a glass of port wine to the invalid, and, feigning an
+appearance of unconcern, left the room, and slipped cautiously down to
+the kitchen. Here she dragged an ironing-table, a clothes-horse, and a
+wood-box on to the trap-door, and breathlessly waited for the Apache's
+next move.
+
+And now, a step might be heard on the driveway, followed by a rap at the
+front door.
+
+Prudently scanning her visitor through the sidelight, and assuring
+herself that he was no breech-clouted savage, but a fellow white man,
+Miss Paulina let in through the narrowest of openings,--who but their
+friend the Harvard man! "Dear soul!" tearfully exclaimed the good lady,
+while Roger Smith stood in mute wonder at the warmth of her greeting.
+
+It was but the work of a moment to explain the situation and acquaint
+him with the peril of the moment.
+
+Sholto, at his leisurely Mexican pace, now opportunely appeared at the
+back door with the hot dinner.
+
+"There is a time for all things," said the "president of Chapter 18th,"
+as (having pulled the bewildered Mexican inside) she vigorously shot the
+door-bolt in place, deposited the smoking viands on the sideboard, and
+thus addressed him. "Sholto," said Miss Paulina, "I have an Apache here
+in the cellar. For the time being his ability to work us harm is
+limited; but an Apache is never nice to have round; and, besides, he
+must have terribly bumped himself poking round there all this time in
+the dark. One would not unnecessarily hurt even a savage. We must
+therefore let him up, bind him fast, and take measures for delivering
+him to the police at Las Cruces. Here is a clothes-line: it is good and
+strong; make up a lasso, and when I open the trap-door, as his head bobs
+in sight, throw it, and then help Mr. Smith haul him out, and tie him."
+
+Sholto's lasso was soon in working order. The trap-door once raised, the
+head of the unsuspecting savage flew up like a Jack in a box, and with
+such a rubber-like bound that Sholto's lasso went wide of the mark. In
+this dilemma, a scientific blow from the fist of a Harvard athlete
+deftly floored him, and, in the consequent lapse of consciousness, he
+was easily bound, and safely deposited in the bottom of the Hilton
+express wagon. This accomplished, Sholto and the Harvard man summarily
+took the road for Las Cruces, some four miles distant. The horse and his
+driver being in absolute accord as to the ratio of miles proper to the
+hour, the captors drove leisurely along; the Harvard man meantime
+relieving the slow monotony of the way, with incident and anecdote, and
+Sholto, in turn, imparting much interesting New-Mexican information.
+
+Presently a faint stir, as of the quiet, persistent nibbling of a mouse
+in the wall, might (but for the talking) have been heard from the bottom
+of the wagon. "Poor beggar!" said the Harvard man, at last recalling to
+mind the captive Apache; "he must, by this time, be about ready to come
+to." And taking from his over-coat pocket a tiny flask of brandy, he
+turned on his seat with the humane intention of aiding nature in
+bringing about that restoration. "Gone! clean gone! by George!"
+exclaimed the astonished athlete. The cunning savage had, with his
+sharp, strong teeth, actually gnawed through his wrist cords, and, with
+tooth and nail extricating himself from the knotted clothes-line, was
+already on his return from the unsatisfactory husks of Mesilla Valley,
+to the fatted veal of the U. S. government, in his father's house,--"The
+Reservation." "_They are fleet steeds that follow!_" quoted the Harvard
+man as the jubilant Apache, with flying heels, loomed tantalizingly on
+the distant plain. The startled cotton-tail, swept by "the wind of his
+going," scurried breathlessly to his desert fastnesses among the
+sage-brush and mesquite.
+
+With a humorous glance at his fast-vanishing form, the Harvard man
+measured with his eye the intervening distance, the speed of the escaped
+captive, and the pace of the propeller of the Hilton express, and
+gracefully accepted the situation. Sholto lazily turned the horse's
+head, and in process of time the discomfited captors of Miss Paulina's
+Apache--like John Gilpin--
+
+    "Where they did get up
+     Did get down again."
+
+Meantime, Miss Hemmenshaw brought up the mid-day meal.
+
+"Auntie," said the invalid, "this feverish cold puts queer fancies in my
+head. While you were away, I must have taken a little nap, and when I
+awoke there seemed to be some sort of a rumpus going on below; after
+which I fancied that a team started away from the back door. It could
+not have been Sholto's; for he would be coming from Brown's about that
+hour with our dinner."
+
+"It may have been just a part of your dream, dear," pacified the aunt;
+"but come, now, here is our dinner. Let us have it together. A
+wonderfully nice dinner Mrs. Brown has sent us, too, and you can
+venture to-day on a quail, and a bit of orange pudding. For myself, I am
+as hungry as a bear;" and, removing the books from the oval bedroom
+table, Miss Paulina laid the cloth, set out the dishes and glasses, and
+daintily arranged the viands, which the two ladies discussed with
+evident relish.
+
+"And now," said the aunt, "since you have dined, and have something to
+brace you up, I will 'tell my experience;'" and forthwith she related to
+the astonished Louise the adventure of the morning. The good lady had
+but accomplished her exciting account, when the valiant captors of the
+Apache drove up.
+
+Miss Paulina, with the concentrated importance of her entire "Chapter,"
+met and opened the door to her hero.
+
+"Well?" asked she of the crestfallen athlete.
+
+"No: ill!" replied he; "the Apache never reached Las Cruces. He managed
+to unbind himself, and slipped from our hands by the way. The
+clothes-line has come back safe; but the savage is, long ere this, well
+on his road to the Mescalero Reservation."
+
+"Well," said Miss Paulina, judicially, "I can't say that I'm sorry. The
+creature had a rough time bumping about that low, dark cellar; and your
+blow on his head was a tough one. And when one considers the
+slip-shodness of things at Las Cruces, and the possible insecurity of
+their jail, _we_, on the whole, are the safer for his escape; and _he_
+will, of course, feel more at home now in the Reservation, and will
+probably remain there for a while, after the fright we gave him."
+
+Thus reassured, the Harvard man accepted Miss Hemmenshaw's invitation to
+stay to supper. And presently the convalescing invalid came down to
+express her thanks for his devoir of the morning. Reclining on the
+parlor lounge, in a cream-white tea gown, she looked so lovely that a
+man might well have dared a whole tribe of savages in her defence. By
+and by they had a quiet game of chess. It goes without saying that the
+lady won. There _might_ be men hard-hearted enough to beat Louise
+Hemmenshaw at chess. The Harvard man was not _of_ them.
+
+So slipped away this happy afternoon; and, at sunset Sholto appeared
+with the tea equipage, and the young people covertly made merry over a
+chafing-dish mess achieved by the Cooking School pupil; and under cover
+of rarebit, water-biscuit, and cups of Russian tea, the Harvard man made
+hay for himself in this bit of sunshine, and grew in favor with both
+aunt and niece.
+
+With Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw, true to her aristocratic birth and
+breeding, pedigree far out-weighed filthy lucre. To be well born was, in
+her estimation, to be truly acceptable to gods and men.
+
+Roger Smith, with his plebeian surname and unillustrious "tanner"
+grandfather, was by no means a suitable husband for her motherless
+niece, to whom, as the head of her brother's household, she had for
+years filled a parent's place. Louise Hemmenshaw, as the good lady
+shrewdly guessed, was the magnet that drew this undeclared lover to
+Mesilla Valley. During the preceding winter they had met at many social
+functions in Boston and Cambridge, and he had become the willing captive
+of her bow and spear. He had never told his love.
+
+The social discrepancy between the lovely aristocrat and Roger--the
+grandson of Roger the Tanner--was too wide to be easily overstepped.
+
+Ostensibly the Harvard man had come to New Mexico to recruit his spent
+energies; but in his heart of hearts he knew that dearer than health was
+the hope of winning the heart of Louise Hemmenshaw. Already his native
+refinement and charm of manner had commended him to Miss Paulina; and
+now, his prowess in the day's adventure had made her, for good and all,
+his warm friend. As to her niece, he told himself, as, that night, by
+the light of a low moon, he took his way to Alamo Ranch, recalling the
+tender pressure of the invalid's white hand, when, with a rosy blush,
+she bade him good-night, that in his wooing he had to-day "scored one;"
+and with the confident egotism of presumptuous mortals, when events play
+unexpectedly into their hands, he decided that Fate had prearranged this
+timely call of his on the Hemmenshaws, and had timed the arrival of the
+Apache at that opportune hour, with an especial view to the fulfilment
+of his own cherished wishes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Another two weeks of lighter Koshare festivities had again brought round
+the more solid fortnightly entertainment of the Club.
+
+Its members duly assembled, the president in his chair, and the
+secretary at attention, Mr. Morehouse thus began his second paper.
+
+"Before Texas," said he, "became a part of an independent republic, and
+until after the Mexican war (when we forced Mexico to sell us all
+California, New Mexico, and Arizona, nearly all of Utah and Nevada,
+besides Texas, and the greater part of Colorado), Mexico proper reached
+way up here; and it is thought by some archaeologists that the mesas or
+table-mountain land especially characterizing the New Mexican landscape
+may have afforded the suggestion for the Teocallis of the great
+pyramid-like mounds, with terraced sides, built by the Aztecs. Some
+scholars have even convinced themselves that the Aztec culture must have
+originated here in the North. Others wholly discard the conclusion.
+
+"Mr. Baxter, in his valuable and interesting book of Mexican travel,
+says, decidedly, 'The New Mexican Indians were not Aztecs, and Montezuma
+had no more to do with New Mexico than he did with New England.' And
+with this assertion I think we must all, perforce, agree.
+
+"Of the Toltecs, the probable predecessors in Mexico of the Aztecs, all
+written records," said the Antiquary, "have long since perished. They
+are known to us only through traditionary legends orally handed down by
+the races that succeeded them.
+
+"They are said to have entered the Valley of Anahnac from a northerly
+direction, coming from a mysterious unknown region, and probably before
+the close of the seventh century. They appear to have been a far more
+gentle and refined nation than their immediate successors, the
+half-savage Aztecs, who, at last, with their semi-civilization,
+dominated Mexico. By general archæological agreement, the Toltecs were
+well instructed in agriculture, and many of the most useful mechanic
+arts.
+
+"'They were,' declares Prescott, 'nice workers in metals.' They invented
+the complex arrangement of time adopted by the Aztecs, who are said to
+have been largely indebted to them for the beginnings of that
+incongruous civilization which reached its high-water mark in the reign
+of the Montezumas. So late as the time of the Spanish Conquest the
+remains of extensive Toltec buildings were to be found in Mexico.
+
+"'The noble ruins of religious and other edifices,' says the same
+writer, 'still to be seen in Mexico, are referred to this people, whose
+name, _Toltec_, has passed into a synonym for _Architect_.'
+
+"After a period of four centuries--having succumbed to famine,
+pestilence, and unsuccessful wars--this remarkable people disappeared
+from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it. It
+is conjectured that some of them may have spread over the region of
+Central America and the neighboring isles; and that the majestic ruins
+of Mitla and Paleque are the work of this vanished race. Tradition
+affirms that a remnant of Toltecs still lingering in Anahnac 'gave
+points' to the next inhabitants; and the Tezcucans are thought to have
+derived their gentle manners and comparatively mild religion from the
+handful of Toltecs who still remained in the country. A Spanish priest,
+with that keen relish for the marvellous common to his kind, accounts
+for this mysterious disappearance by supernatural stories of giants and
+demons.
+
+"According to good authorities, more than a hundred years elapsed
+between the strange disappearance of the Toltecs from the land of
+Anahnac and the arrival on its borders of the Aztecs.
+
+"After the nomadic fashion of barbarous races, this people did not at
+once make a permanent settlement, but pitched their tents in various
+parts of the Mexican valley, enduring many casualties and hardships, and
+being at one time enslaved by a more powerful tribe, whom their prowess
+subsequently dominated.
+
+"Some of these wanderings and adventures are perpetuated in their oral
+traditional lore.
+
+"One of these legends is well substantiated, and current at this day,
+having been the origin of the device of the eagle and cactus, which form
+the arms of the present Mexican republic, and may be found on the face
+of the Mexican silver dollar. Thus it runs: 'Having in 1325 halted on
+the southwestern borders of the larger Mexican lakes, the Aztecs there
+beheld, perched on the stem of a prickly pear, which shot out from a
+crevice of a rock that was washed by the waves, a royal eagle of
+extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in his talons, and his
+broad wings open to the rising sun.
+
+"'They hailed the auspicious omen, which the oracle announced as an
+indication of the site of their future city.'
+
+"The low marshes were then half buried in water; yet, nothing daunted,
+they at once proceeded to lay the sloppy foundation of their capital, by
+sinking piles into the shallows. On these they erected the light
+dwelling-fabrics of reeds and rushes,--the frail beginnings of that
+solid Aztec architecture carried to such elegant elaboration in the time
+of the Montezumas. In token of its miraculous origin they called their
+city Tenochtitlan. Later it was known as Mexico, a name derived from the
+Aztec war-god, Mexitil.
+
+"It has been shown that the Aztec race, once permanently established in
+Mexico, finally attained to a civilization far in advance of the other
+wandering tribes of North America.
+
+"'The degree of civilization which they had reached,' says Prescott, 'as
+inferred by their political institutions, may be considered not far
+short of that enjoyed by our Saxon ancestors under Alfred. In respect to
+the nature of it, they may better be compared to the Egyptians; and the
+examination of their social relations and culture may suggest still
+stronger points of resemblance to that ancient people.
+
+"'Their civilization,' he goes on to say, 'was, at the first, of the
+hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce virtues of
+the Aztec were all his own. They refused to submit to European
+culture--to be engrafted on a foreign stock. They gradually increased in
+numbers, made marked improvements both in polity and military
+discipline, and ultimately established a reputation for courage as well
+as cruelty in war which made their name terrible throughout the valley.'
+In the early part of the fifteenth century--nearly a hundred years after
+the foundation of the city--that remarkable league--of which it has been
+affirmed that 'it has no parallel in history'--was formed between the
+states of Mexico and Tezcuco, and the neighboring little kingdom of
+Tlacopan, by which they agreed mutually to support each other in their
+wars, offensive and defensive, and that in the distribution of the spoil
+one-fifth should be assigned to Tlacopan and the remainder be
+divided--in what proportions is uncertain--between the two other powers.
+
+"What is considered more remarkable than the treaty itself, however, is
+the fidelity with which it was kept.
+
+"During a century of uninterrupted warfare that ensued no instance, it
+is declared, occurred in which the parties quarrelled over the
+distribution of the spoil. By the middle of the fifteenth century the
+allies, overleaping the rocky ramparts of their own valley, found wider
+occupation for their army, and under the first Montezuma, year after
+year saw their return to the Mexican capital, loaded with the spoils of
+conquered cities, and with throngs of devoted captives.
+
+"No State was able long to resist the accumulated strength of the
+confederates; and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, on the
+arrival of the Spaniards, the Aztec dominion reached across the
+continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific."
+
+Here Mr. Morehouse ended his paper on the Toltecs, and the Koshare, with
+many thanks for his interesting account of these ancient races,
+supplemented his information by a general discussion of the genuineness
+of the accepted authorities for the early history of the Aztecs and of
+the time of Montezuma.
+
+"Prescott," said the Minister, "traces some points of resemblance
+between the history of the Aztecs and that of the ancient Romans;
+especially in polity and military success does he compare them."
+
+"Unfortunately," observed the Antiquary, "the earlier records of the
+Mexican people can only be scantily gleaned from oral tradition and
+hiero-graphical paintings."
+
+"Later, however," remarked the Journalist, "we have the seemingly more
+definite and reliable accounts of the Spanish chronicles."
+
+"These," returned the Minister, "being usually ecclesiastic, have warped
+their record to suit their own bigoted views; consequently, much of the
+narrative popularly known as Mexican history is to be taken with more
+than the proverbial pinch of salt."
+
+"It has," said the Journalist, "been urged by realistic critics of our
+own fascinating historian--Prescott--that since he drew his historic
+data, with the exception of the military record of the Spaniards, from
+these unreliable sources, his history is little other than the merest
+romance. Plainly, the assertions of some of the chroniclers are scarce
+more worthy of credence than the equally fascinating adventures of
+Sinbad the Sailor, and the impossible stories of Baron Munchausen.
+'Bernard Diaz'--that enigmatical personage from whom many of Prescott's
+data are drawn--tells us that the Aztecs actually fattened men and women
+in cages, like spring chickens, for their sacrifice, and asserts that at
+the dedication of one of their temples a procession of captives two
+miles long, and numbering seventy-two thousand persons, were led to
+sacrifice! By the way, it has, however, been latterly proved that the
+so-called sacrificial stone, now exhibited in the National Museum of
+Mexico, is not a relic of the Aztecs, but of the earlier Toltecs (who
+were not addicted to human sacrifice), and is as innocent of human blood
+as the Calendar Stone, referred to the same period. The critics of Diaz
+have detected in his account constant blunders in many important
+matters, and his glaring geographical errors would seem to prove that,
+though he claims to have been, all through the Conquest, the very shadow
+of Hernando Cortez, he has never even been in the country he describes!"
+
+"From what I have read of Bernald," said Leon, "I think we may finish
+him off with 'Betsy Prig's' very conclusive objection to Sairey Gamp's
+'Mrs. Harris'--there ain't no sich person!"
+
+"Even so," exclaimed the Minister, "I, for one, agree with certain
+downright critics who contend that Diaz was a pure fabrication, a
+priestly scheme of the Roman Church to screen the cruel enormities of
+their agent, Cortez. Father Torquemada, another of Prescott's
+authorities, is thought to be scarcely more reliable. Las Casas, another
+of our historian authorities, whose history was, at the time, promptly
+suppressed by the all-powerful Inquisition, declares these Spanish
+histories of the Conquest to be 'wicked and false.'"
+
+"And yet, in spite of these strictures," contended Leon, "I, for one,
+still pin my faith to Prescott and his implicit honesty of purpose. He
+gave us, in his own learned and fascinating way, the narrative of these
+priestly chroniclers as he found it. If the chroniclers lied, why, so
+much the worse for the chroniclers."
+
+"Lying," complained the Grumbler, "is a malady most incident to
+historians;" and thereupon rose to open the parlor door for the
+gray-eyed school teacher, who just then bade the Koshare good-night,
+adding that she had already been too long away from her sister.
+
+And now the chairman announced the next paper in the Koshare course for
+the second Saturday in February, and the members, one and all,
+dispersed.
+
+Sholto, roused from a most enjoyable series of naps, brought his wagon
+to the side door, and with a friendly grasp from the hand of Miss
+Paulina, and a shy, tremulous clasp from that of her niece, the Harvard
+man saw the ladies off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+February had come, bringing in its train such weather as verified the
+warmest praise of New Mexico's perfect climate.
+
+It was on one of its most spring-like afternoons that a walking party of
+eight set out to pay a long-proposed visit to the ladies at Hilton
+Ranch.
+
+As the little party went gayly along the mesa, Leon, carrying his gun,
+shot doves for the evening meal, while the rest walked on, chatting
+merrily.
+
+The ladies talking over, by the way, the late attempt of the Apache on
+Hilton Ranch, Mrs. Bixbee declared herself curious to see the cellar in
+which Miss Paulina had caught that prowling savage. On their arrival
+that good lady, informed of this desire, kindly proceeded to gratify her
+guest, and the entire party was presently led by her to the kitchen, the
+hero of this adventure modestly walking beside the fair lady of his
+love. Sholto, busied about the place, was just then out of call, and
+Miss Hemmenshaw, intent to afford them a peep into the cellar, begged
+the Harvard man to raise for her the heavy trap-door.
+
+The dear lady never quite knew how it was that, leaning forward, she
+lost her balance, and, but for the prompt help of Roger Smith, might
+have landed, pell-mell, on the cellar bottom; or how, in rescuing her,
+he himself made the misstep that, ere he could recover his poise, threw
+him to the end of the ladder-like cellar stairs.
+
+Recovering breath, Roger Smith cheerily called up to the affrighted
+group at the top, "All right!" but, on pulling himself together to make
+the ascent, he suddenly found all wrong. He had sprained his ankle; and
+it was with painful effort that he won to the top. At this juncture
+Sholto, aroused by the unwonted rumpus, made his appearance,
+anticipating no less a disaster than the reappearance of the slippery
+savage, for whom he still held the lasso "in pickle." Disabled by the
+sprain, the Harvard man submitted himself to the stout arms of the
+Mexican, and, by Miss Paulina's direction, was carried into the bedroom
+adjoining the ranch parlor.
+
+There, laid upon a movable couch which served the double purpose of sofa
+and bed, Sholto having, not without difficulty, removed his boot and
+stocking, he submitted the swollen foot to the careful inspection of
+Miss Hemmenshaw, who, with a steadiness of nerve not unworthy of her
+"Chapter," put the dislocated joint in place, bandaged the injured
+member with arnica, administered an internal dose of the same
+restorative, and duly followed it with a glass of old Port. This done,
+Sholto wheeled the sufferer's couch into the adjoining parlor. Half an
+hour later Leon came in with a well-filled game-bag; and after an hour
+of mild Koshare merriment, in which the athlete but feebly joined (the
+pain of his ankle was still terrible), the little party took its way, in
+the fading sunlight, to Alamo Ranch. Miss Paulina, having promptly
+decided that her patient was unequal to the return by way of the jolting
+Hilton express team, sent to Mrs. Brown an order for supper for her
+guest, Louise, and herself. It was duly conveyed to Hilton's by an Alamo
+chore-boy. Sholto, as the sole male dependence of Hilton's, must stick
+to his post; for, sagely observed the "Daughter of the Revolution," two
+women, heroic though they might be, were no match for an Apache
+marauder; and as for poor Roger Smith, he could now neither "fight" nor
+"run away."
+
+Sholto lighted the lamps, laid the supper on the low Queen Anne table,
+added fresh water from the spring, and when a pot of tea had been made
+by the hostess' own careful hand, and Sholto had wheeled up the couch of
+the invalid, that he might take his supper _à la Roman_, the three made
+a cheery meal.
+
+When the man had removed the supper things, and piled fresh wood on the
+andirons, the ladies brought their work-baskets; and while they busied
+themselves with doily and centre-piece, the Harvard man, lying in the
+comfort of partial relief from pain, watched the dainty fingers of
+Louise Hemmenshaw as she bent industriously over her embroidery, and
+fell fathoms deeper in love with the dear and beautiful girl.
+
+Roger Smith stayed on at Hilton Ranch, where, thrown day after day in
+semi-helplessness on the kind attendance of Miss Paulina and the sweet
+society of her niece, he (I grieve to say) fell a ready prey to the
+suggestions of a certain wily personage who (according to Dr. Watts)
+finds employment for idle hands, and thus conceived the wickedness of
+cunningly using this accident to further his own personal ends. Thus
+devil-tempted, this hitherto upright young person resolved that it
+should be a long day before his sprained ankle should permit him to
+return to Brown's, and lose this precious opportunity of establishing
+himself in the good graces of the aunt, and winning the love of the
+niece.
+
+Far from approving the crooked policy which led Roger Smith to feign
+lameness long after the injured ankle had become as sound as ever, the
+present historian can only, in view of this lapse from integrity, affirm
+with Widow Bedott that "we're poor creeturs!" and, with that
+depreciative view of humanity, go on with this truthful narrative.
+
+A whole delicious month had been passed by the Harvard man in this
+paradise,--Elysian days, while, waited on by Sholto, petted by Miss
+Paulina, and companioned by the loveliest of houris, he dreamed out his
+dream.
+
+At last, on a certain decisive evening, Roger Smith found himself alone
+in the gloaming with Louise Hemmenshaw. The aunt, who through all these
+weeks had zealously chaperoned her niece, had passed into the
+dining-room to evolve some chafing-dish delicacy for the evening meal.
+Without, the setting sun flooded all the west with gold, touched the
+distant mountain peaks with splendor, and threw a parting veil of glory
+over the wide mesa. Within, the firelight made dancing shadows on the
+parlor wall, where the pair sat together in that eloquent silence so
+dear to love. "Well," said the athlete to himself (compunctiously
+glancing at his superfluous crutches, left within easy reach of his
+hand), "this performance can't go on forever. I have made believe about
+long enough; what better may I do than own up this very night, and
+somehow bring this base deceit to an end."
+
+Mentally rehearsing the formula, in which, over and over, he had asked
+the hand of this beautiful aristocrat, his mind still sorely misgave
+him. "Why," thought this depressed lover, "was not my name Winthrop,
+Endicott, or Sturgis, instead of Smith; and my grandfather a senator, a
+judge, or even a stockbroker, rather than a tanner?"
+
+Neither Miss Paulina nor her brother, he discouragedly mused, would ever
+countenance this unequal match. His millions would with them weigh
+nothing against "the claims of long descent."
+
+The sun had gone down, the after-glow had faded to gray. They were still
+alone. The firelight half revealed the lovely figure beside the hearth.
+In that gown of golden-brown velvet, with the creamy old lace at wrists
+and throat, the brown hair combed smoothly from the white forehead,
+knotted behind and fastened with a quaint arrow of Etruscan gold, Louise
+Hemmenshaw was simply adorable! It was indeed good to be here; and why
+should not a life so sweet and satisfying go on indefinitely?
+
+"It is four weeks to-day since I fell down cellar,"--such was the
+commonplace beginning to this much considered tale of love.
+
+"Really?" said the lady, looking innocently up from an absorbed
+contemplation of the fender. "It has not seemed so long. I never before
+realized what a serious thing it is to sprain one's ankle. You have been
+a most patient sufferer, Mr. Smith; and, indeed, for the past two weeks,
+a most jolly one. Aunt Paulina was saying to-day that it was high time
+we all went back to Alamo for our meals, and helped out the Koshare
+doings of the Club."
+
+"Dear Miss Hemmenshaw," here blurted out the culprit, "do not despise me
+for my meanness, since it is all for love of you that I have been
+shamming lameness. For these last two weeks I could at any time have
+walked as well as ever." And, hereupon, without the slightest reference
+to his crutches, he rose from his chair and skipped over to her side. "A
+sprain," explained this audacious lover, "may be cured in a fortnight,
+but it takes a good month to woo and win a fair lady. Having soon after
+my accident decided that point, I have done my best. Tell me, dear
+Louise," pleaded he, "that my time has been well spent. Say that,
+deceitful ingrate though I am, you will take me, for good and all."
+
+"Roger Smith," replied the lady, with much severity, "you have repaid
+the devoted care of two unsuspecting females by a whole fortnight of
+wilful duplicity. For my aunt I cannot answer; for myself, I can only
+reply,--since to err is human; to forgive, womanlike,--dear Roger, on
+the whole, I will."
+
+Miss Paulina, a moment later entering the parlor, surprised her invalid
+guest, standing crutchless on his firm feet, with his arm thrown about
+the waist of her niece. "Well, well!" exclaimed the astonished lady,
+"and without his crutches!"
+
+"Dear Miss Paulina," said Roger Smith with a happy laugh, "my ankle is
+as well as ever; and your niece has promised to marry me. Say that you
+will have me for your nephew."
+
+"I seem already to have gotten you, my good sir, whether I will or no,"
+laughed Miss Hemmenshaw. "But, my stars and garters" (mentally added
+she), "what ever will my brother say? A tanner's grandson coming into
+the family! and he a Hemmenshaw, and as proud as Lucifer!" "Never mind,
+Auntie dear," said the smiling fiancée, guessing her thoughts. It will
+be all right with father when he comes to know Roger; and besides, let
+us remember that under the 'Star Spangled Banner' we have our
+'Vanderbilts,' our 'Goulds,' and our 'Rockefellers;' but _no_ Vere de
+Veres. And if we _had_, why, Love laughs at heraldry, and is
+
+    "'Its own great loveliness alway.'"
+
+"To-morrow," said Miss Paulina decisively, "we will all dine at Alamo
+Ranch."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Through this month of wooing and betrothing at Hilton Ranch, the
+Koshare, at Alamo, never once remitted its endeavor to hearten the
+despondent.
+
+The weekly entertainments took their regular course, and were
+successfully carried on, and, in due time, the fortnightly club convened
+to listen to the Antiquary's account of "Montezuma and his Time."
+
+And here the Koshare chronicle returns on its track to record that able
+paper.
+
+"As a consistent Koshare," said Mr. Morehouse, to his eager listeners,
+"it behooves me to give--without that dry adherence to facts observed by
+the 'Gradgrind' historian--the charming melodramatic details of that
+romantic monarch's life and times afforded by the popular
+Munchausen-like data of the Spanish chroniclers, albeit they have in
+their entirety, all the fascination, and, sometimes, all the
+unbelievableness of a fairy tale.
+
+"The Aztec government," prefaced the Antiquary, "was an elective
+monarchy, the choice always restricted to the royal family.
+
+"The candidate usually preferred must have distinguished himself in war;
+though, if (as in the case of the last Montezuma) he was a member of the
+priesthood, the royal-born priest, no less than the warrior was, with
+the Aztec, available as an emperor.
+
+"When the nobles by whom Montezuma the Second was made monarch went to
+inform the candidate of the result of the election, they are said to
+have found him sweeping the court of the temple to which he had
+dedicated himself. It is further asserted that when they led him to the
+palace to proclaim him king, he demurred, declaring himself unworthy the
+honor conferred on him. It is a humiliating proof of the weakness of
+human nature in face of temptation, to find that, later, this pious king
+so far forswore his humility as to pose before his subjects as a god;
+that five or six hundred nobles in waiting were ordered to attend daily
+at his morning toilet, only daring to appear before him with bared feet.
+
+"It was not until, by a victorious campaign, he had obtained a
+sufficient number of captives to furnish victims for the bloody rites
+which Aztec superstition demanded to grace his inauguration,
+that--amidst that horrible pomp of human sacrifice which stained the
+civilization of his people--Montezuma was crowned.
+
+"The Mexican crown of that day is described as resembling a mitre in
+form, and curiously ornamented with gold, gems, and feathers.
+
+"The Aztec princes, especially towards the close of the dynasty, lived
+in a barbaric Oriental pomp, of which Montezuma was the most conspicuous
+example in the history of the nation.
+
+"Elevation, like wine, seems to have gone to the head of the second
+Montezuma.
+
+"An account of his domestic establishment reads like the veriest record
+of midsummer madness. Four hundred young nobles, we are told, waited on
+the royal table, setting the covers, in their turn, before the monarch,
+and immediately retiring, as even his courtiers might not see Montezuma
+eat. Having drunk from cups of gold and pearl, these costly goblets,
+together with the table utensils of the king, were distributed among his
+courtiers. Cortez tells us that so many dishes were prepared for each
+meal of this lordly epicure, that they filled a large hall; and that he
+had a harem of a thousand women. His clothes, which were changed four
+times a day (like his table service), were never used a second time, but
+were given as rewards of merit to nobles and soldiers who had
+distinguished themselves in war. If it happened that he had to walk, a
+carpet was spread along his way, lest his sacred feet should touch the
+ground. His subjects were required, on his approach, to stop and close
+their eyes, that they might not be dazzled by his effulgent majesty. His
+ostentatious humility gave place to an intolerable arrogance. He
+disgusted his subjects by his haughty deportment, exacting from them the
+most slavish homage, and alienating their affection by the imposition of
+the grievous taxes demanded by the lavish expenditure of his court.
+
+"In his first years Montezuma's record was, in many respects,
+praiseworthy. He led his armies in person. The Aztec banners were
+carried far and wide, in the furthest province on the Gulf of Mexico,
+and the distant region of Nicaragua and Honduras. His expeditions were
+generally successful, and during his reign the limits of the empire
+were more widely extended than at any preceding period.
+
+"To the interior concerns of his kingdom he gave much attention,
+reforming the courts of justice, and carefully watching over the
+execution of the laws, which he enforced with stern severity.
+
+"Like the Arabian ruler,--Haroun Alraschid, of benign memory,--he
+patrolled the streets of his capital in disguise, to make personal
+acquaintance with the abuses in it. He liberally compensated all who
+served him. He displayed great munificence in public enterprise,
+constructing and embellishing the temples, bringing water into the
+capital by a new channel, and establishing a retreat for invalid
+soldiers in the city of Colhuacan.
+
+"According to some writers of authority there were, in Montezuma's day,
+thirty great caciques, or nobles, who had their residence, at least a
+part of the year, in the capital.
+
+"Each of these, it is asserted, could muster a hundred thousand vassals
+on his estate. It would seem that such wild statements should be 'taken
+with a pinch of salt.' All the same, it is clear, from the testimony of
+the conquerors, that the country was occupied by numerous powerful
+chieftains, who lived like independent princes on their domains. It is
+certain that there was a distinct class of nobles who held the most
+important offices near the person of their emperor.
+
+"In Montezuma's time the Aztec religion reached its zenith. It is said
+to have had as exact and burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in any
+nation. 'One,' observes Prescott, 'is struck with its apparent
+incongruity, as if some portion had emanated from a comparatively
+refined people, open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a
+spirit of unmitigated ferocity; which naturally suggests the idea of two
+distinct sources, and authorizes the belief that the Aztecs had
+inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was
+afterwards engrafted their own mythology.' The Aztecs, like the
+idolaters to whom Paul preached, declaring the 'Unknown God' of their
+'ignorant worship,' recognized a Supreme Creator and Lord of the
+Universe.
+
+"In their prayers they thus addressed him: 'The God by whom we live,
+that knoweth all thoughts, and giveth all gifts;' but, as has been
+observed, 'from the vastness of this conception their untutored minds
+sought relief in a plurality of inferior deities,--ministers who
+executed the creator's purposes, each, in his turn, presiding over the
+elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various affairs of man.'
+Of these there were thirteen principal deities, and more than two
+hundred inferior; to each of whom some special day or appropriate
+festival was consecrated.
+
+"Huitzilopotchli, a terrible and sanguinary monster, was the primal of
+these; the patron deity of the nation. The forms of the Mexican idols
+were quaint and eccentric, and were in the highest degree symbolical.
+
+"The fantastic image of this god of the unpronounceable name was loaded
+with costly ornaments; his temples were the most stately and august of
+their public edifices, and in every city of the empire his altars reeked
+with the blood of human hecatombs.
+
+"His name is compounded of two words, signifying 'humming-bird' and
+'left;' from his image having the feathers of this bird on his left
+foot.
+
+"Thus runs the tradition respecting this god's first appearance on
+earth: 'His mother, a devout person, one day, in her attendance on the
+temple, saw a ball of bright-colored feathers floating in the air. She
+took it and deposited it in her bosom, and, consequently, from her, the
+dread deity was in due time born.' He is fabled to have come into the
+world (like the Greek goddess, Minerva) armed _cap-à-pie_ with spear and
+shield, and his head surmounted by a crest of green plumes.
+
+"A far more admirable personage in their mythology was Quetzalcoatl, god
+of the air; his name signifies 'feathered serpent' and 'twin.' During
+his beneficent residence on earth he is said to have instructed the
+people in civil government, in the arts, and in agriculture. Under him
+it was that the earth brought forth flower and fruit without the fatigue
+of cultivation.
+
+"Then it was that an ear of corn in two days became as much as a man
+could carry; and the cotton, as it grew beneath his fostering smile,
+took, of its own accord, the rich dyes of human art.
+
+"In those halcyon days of Quetzalcoatl all the air was sweet with
+perfumes and musical with the singing of birds.
+
+"Pursued by the wrath of a brother-god, from some mysterious cause
+unexplained by the fabler, this gracious deity was finally obliged to
+flee the country. On his way he is said to have stopped at Cholula,
+where the remains of a temple dedicated to his worship are still shown.
+
+"On the shores of the Mexican Gulf Quetzalcoatl took leave of his
+followers, and promising that he and his descendants would revisit them
+hereafter, entered his 'Wizard Skiff,' and embarked on the great ocean
+for the fabled land of Tlapallan.
+
+"The Mexicans looked confidently for the second coming of this
+benevolent deity, who is said to have been tall in stature, with a white
+skin, long, dark hair, and a flowing beard. Undoubtedly, this cherished
+tradition, as the chroniclers affirm, prepared the way for the reception
+of the Spanish conquerors.
+
+"Long before the landing of the Spaniards in Mexico, rumors of the
+appearance of these men with fair complexions and flowing beards--so
+unlike their own physiognomy--had startled the superstitious Aztecs. The
+period for the return of Quetzalcoatl was now near at hand. The priestly
+oracles were consulted; they are said to have declared, after much
+deliberation, that the Spaniards, though not gods, were children of the
+Sun; that they derived their strength from that luminary, and were only
+vulnerable when his beams were withdrawn; and they recommended attacking
+them while buried in slumber. This childish advice, so contrary to Aztec
+military usage, was reluctantly followed by these credulous warriors,
+and resulted in the defeat and bloody slaughter of nearly the whole
+detachment.
+
+"The conviction of the supernaturalism of the Spaniard is said to have
+gained ground by some uncommon natural occurrences, such as the
+accidental swell and overflow of a lake, the appearance of a comet, and
+conflagration of the great temple.
+
+"We are told that Montezuma read in these prodigies special
+annunciations of Heaven that argued the speedy downfall of his empire.
+
+"From this somewhat digressive account of the Aztec superstition, in
+regard to the 'second coming' of their beneficent tutelar divinity,
+which, as may be seen, played into the hands of Cortez, and furthered
+his hostile designs upon Mexico, let us return to the time in Aztec
+history when no usurping white man had set foot upon Montezuma's
+territory.
+
+"We are told that this people, in their comparative ignorance of the
+material universe, sought relief from the oppressive idea of the endless
+duration of time by breaking it up into distinct cycles, each of several
+thousand years' duration. At the end of each of these periods, by the
+agency of one of the elements, the human family, as they held, was to be
+swept from the earth, and the sun blotted out from the heavens, to be
+again freshly rekindled. With later theologians, who have less excuse
+for the unlovely superstition, they held that the wicked were to expiate
+their sins everlastingly in a place of horrible darkness. It was the
+work of a (so-called) Christianity to add to the Aztec place of torment
+the torture of perpetual fire and brimstone. The Aztec heaven, like the
+Scandinavian Valhalla, was especially reserved for their heroes who fell
+in battle. To these privileged souls were added those slain in
+sacrifice. These fortunate elect of the Aztecs seem to have been
+destined for a time to a somewhat lively immortality, as they at once
+passed into the presence of the Sun, whom they accompanied with songs
+and choral dances in his bright progress through the heavens. After
+years of this stirring existence, these long-revolving spirits were
+kindly permitted to take breath; and thereafter it was theirs to animate
+the clouds, to reincarnate in singing birds of beautiful plumage, and to
+revel amidst the bloom and odors of the gardens of Paradise.
+
+"Apart from this refined Elysium and a moderately comfortable hell, void
+of appliances for the torture of burning, the Aztecs had a third place
+of abode for immortals. Thither passed those 'o'er bad for blessing and
+o'er good for banning,' who had but the merit of dying of certain
+(capriciously selected) diseases. These commonplace spirits were fabled
+to enjoy a negative existence of indolent contentment. 'The Aztec
+priests,' says Prescott, 'in this imperfect stage of civilization,
+endeavored to dazzle the imagination of this ignorant people with
+superstitious awe, and thus obtained an influence over the popular mind
+beyond that which has probably existed in any other country, even in
+ancient Egypt.'
+
+"Time will not permit here a detailed account of this insidious
+priesthood; its labored and pompous ceremonial; its midnight prayers;
+its cruel penance (as the drawing of blood from the body by
+flagellation, or piercing of the flesh with the thorns of the aloe),
+akin to the absurd austerities of Roman Catholic fanaticism. The Aztec
+priest, unlike the Roman, was allowed to marry, and have a family of his
+own; and not _all_ the religious ceremonies imposed by him were austere.
+Many of them were of a light and cheerful complexion, such as national
+songs and dances, in which women were allowed to join. There were, too,
+innocent processions of children crowned with garlands, bearing to the
+altars of their gods offerings of fruit, ripened maize, and odoriferous
+gums. It was on these peaceful rites, derived from his milder and more
+refined Toltec predecessors, that the fierce Aztec grafted the loathsome
+rite of human sacrifice.
+
+"To what extent this abomination was carried cannot now be accurately
+determined. The priestly chroniclers, as has been shown, were not above
+the meanness of making capital for the church, by exaggerating the
+enormities of the pagan dispensation. Scarcely any of these reporters
+pretend to estimate the yearly human sacrifice throughout the empire at
+less than twenty thousand; and some carry the number as high as fifty
+thousand. A good Catholic bishop, writing a few years after the
+conquest, states in his letter that twenty thousand victims were yearly
+slaughtered in the capital. A lie is brought to absolute perfection when
+its author is able to believe it himself.
+
+"Torquemada, another chronicler, often quoted by Prescott, turns this
+into twenty thousand _infants_!
+
+"These innocent creatures, he tells us, were generally bought by the
+priests from parents poor enough and superstitious enough to stifle the
+promptings of nature, and were, at seasons of drought, at the festival
+of Haloc, the insatiable god of the rain, offered up, borne to their
+doom in open litters, dressed in festal robes, and decked with freshly
+blown flowers, their pathetic cries drowned in the wild chant of the
+priests. It is needless to add that this assumption has but the
+slightest groundwork of likelihood.
+
+"Las Casas, before referred to, thus boldly declares: 'This is the
+estimate of brigands who wish to find an apology for their own
+atrocities;' and loosely puts the victims at so low a rate as to make it
+clear that any specific number is the merest conjecture.
+
+"Prescott, commenting on these fabulous statements, instances the
+dedication of the great temple of the 'Mexican War God' in 1486, when
+the prisoners, for years reserved for the purpose, were said to have
+been ranged in files forming a procession nearly two miles long; when
+the ceremony consumed, as averred, several days, and seventy thousand
+captives are declared to have perished at the shrine of this terrible
+deity. In view of this statement, Prescott logically observes: 'Who can
+believe that so numerous a body would have suffered themselves to be led
+unresistingly, like sheep, to the slaughter? Or how could their remains,
+too great for consumption in the ordinary way, be disposed of without
+breeding a pestilence in the capital? One fact,' he adds, 'may be
+considered certain. It was customary to preserve the skulls of the
+sacrificed in buildings appropriate to the purpose; and the companions
+of Cortez say they counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand skulls in
+one of the edifices.'
+
+"Religious ceremonials were arranged for the Aztec people by their
+crafty and well-informed priesthood, and were generally typical of some
+circumstances in the character or history of the deity who was the
+object of them. That in honor of the god called by the Aztecs 'the soul
+of the world,' and depicted as a handsome man endowed with perpetual
+youth, was one of their most important sacrifices. An account of this
+sanguinary performance is gravely given by Prescott and other writers.
+Though highly sensational and melodramatic, since our betters have found
+it believable, we transcribe it for the New Koshare; thus runs the
+tale:--
+
+"'A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his
+personal beauty, and without a single blemish on his body, was selected
+to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and
+instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and
+dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and
+with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the ancient Mexicans
+were as fond as are their descendants at the present day. When he went
+abroad he was attended by a train of the royal pages; and as he halted
+in the streets to play some favorite melody the crowd prostrated
+themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their
+good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life until within a
+month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls were then given him as
+concubines; and with these he continued to live in idle dalliance,
+feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the
+honors of a divinity. At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The
+term of his short-lived glories was at an end.
+
+"'He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair
+partners of his revelry. One of the royal barges transported him across
+the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the
+city. Hither the inhabitants flocked to witness the consummation of the
+ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the
+unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers, and broke in
+pieces the musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of
+his captivity.
+
+"'On the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted
+locks flowed disorderedly over their sable robes, covered with
+hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. They led him to the sacrificial
+stone, a huge block of jasper with its upper surface somewhat convex. On
+this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and
+limbs, while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his
+bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with
+a sharp razor of _itzli_ (a volcanic substance hard as flint), and,
+inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The
+minister of death, first holding the heart up towards the sun (also an
+object of their worship) cast it at the feet of the god, while the
+multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration.'
+
+"The tragic circumstances depicted in this sanguinary tale were used by
+the priests to 'point a moral.' The immolation of this unhappy youth was
+expounded to the people as a type of human destiny, which, brilliant in
+its beginning, often closes in sorrow and disaster.
+
+"In this loathsome manner, if we may believe the account given, was the
+mangled body disposed of. It was delivered by the priests to the warrior
+who had taken the captive in battle, and served up by him at an
+entertainment given to his friends.
+
+"This, we are told, was no rude cannibal orgy, but a refined banquet,
+teeming with delicious beverages, and delicate viands prepared with
+dainty art, and was attended by guests of both sexes, and conducted with
+all the decorum of civilized life. Thus, in the Aztec religious
+ceremonial, refinement and the extreme of barbarism met together.
+
+"The Aztec nation had, at the time of the Conquest, many claims to the
+character of a civilized community. The debasing influence of their
+religious rites it was, however, that furnished the fanatical conquerors
+with their best apology for the subjugation of this people. One-half
+condones the excuses of the invaders, who with the cross in one hand and
+the bloody sword in the other, justified their questionable deeds by the
+abolishment of human sacrifice.
+
+"The oppressions of Montezuma, with the frequent insurrections of his
+people," concluded the Antiquary, "when in the latter part of his reign
+one-half the forces of his empire are said to have been employed in
+suppressing the commotions of the other, disgust at his arrogance, and
+his outrageous fiscal exactions, reduced his subjects to that condition
+which made them an easy prey to Cortez, whose army at last overpowered
+the emperor and swept the Aztec civilization from the face of the
+earth."
+
+"I find it strange," said the Journalist (in the little talk that
+followed Mr. Morehouse's able paper), "that civilized nations have held
+an idea so monstrous as the necessity of vicarious physical suffering of
+a victim to appease the wrath of a divine being with the erring
+creatures who, such as they are, are the work of his hands.
+
+"That unenlightened races, from time immemorial, should have supposed
+that the shedding of blood propitiated their angry god, or gods, is but
+the natural outcome of ignorance and superstition; but, that in this
+twentieth century, civilized worshippers should sing--
+
+    'There is a fountain filled with blood
+      Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
+    And sinners plunged beneath that flood
+      Lose all their guilty stains'--
+
+passes my understanding."
+
+"In the ruins of Palenque there is," said the Antiquary, "a scene
+portrayed on its crumbling walls, in which priests are immolating in a
+furnace placed at the feet of an image of Saturn the choicest infants of
+the nation, while a trumpeter enlivens the occasion with music, and in
+the background a female spectator, supposed to be the mother of the
+victim, looks on."
+
+"The sacrifices to Moloch (or Saturn)," interpolated the Minister, "were
+marked features of the Phoenician idolatry. In the Bible account we read
+that even their kings 'made their children to pass through the fire to
+Moloch.'"
+
+"Well," commented the Grumbler, "it may be said of a portion of this
+evening's entertainment that it is distinguished by the charm found by
+'Helen's' sanguinary-minded 'baby,' in the story of 'Goliath's
+head,'--it is 'all bluggy.'"
+
+"Right you are," responded the star boarder with a shudder. "Cold
+shivers have meandered along my poor back until it has become one
+dreadful block of ice; and, judging by the horror depicted on these
+ladies' faces as they listened to the details of the Aztec sacrifice, I
+fancy that they too have supped o'er-full of horrors."
+
+The Minister's eye rested for a moment affectionately on his stanch
+little wife. He sighed, and looked with mild rebuke on these godless
+triflers.
+
+And now the Koshare (some of them stoutly orthodox) wisely put by the
+question of vicarious atonement, and summarily adjourned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It was but the next week when, unexpectedly as thunderbolts now and then
+surprise us on days of serene, unclouded sky, an unlooked-for domestic
+calamity startled Alamo Ranch.
+
+Dennis, the good-natured Irish waiter, and Fang Lee, the Chinese cook,
+had come to blows. The battle had been (so to put it) a religious
+controversy, and such, as we know, have a bitterness all their own. It
+was inaugurated by Dennis, who, as a good Catholic, had, on a Friday,
+refused to sample one of Fang's _chef-d'oeuvres_,--a dish of veal
+cutlets with mushroom sauce. A mutual interchange of offensive words,
+taunts highly derogatory to his holiness Pope Leo XIII. and equally
+insulting to the memory of that ancient Chinese sage, Confucius, had
+finally led to a bout of fisticuffs. In this encounter, Fang Lee, a
+slightly built, undersized celestial, had naturally been worsted at the
+hand of the robust Hibernian, a good six feet five in his stockings.
+Dennis, the "chip well off his shoulder," had peacefully returned to the
+duties of his vocation, nonchalantly carrying in the dinner, removing
+the plates and dishes, and subsequently whistling "St. Patrick's Day in
+the Morning" under the very nose of the Confucian, as he unconcernedly
+washed his plates and glasses, and scoured his knives. Fang, having
+meantime sent in his dinner, cleaned his pots and pans, brushed his
+baggy trousers, adjusted his disordered pigtail, and straightway gave in
+his notice; and with sullen dignity retired to the privacy of his
+bedroom, for the avowed purpose of packing his box. On the ensuing
+morning he would shake from his feet the dust of Alamo Ranch.
+
+Vain were the endeavors of his discomfited employers to gain the ear of
+the implacable Fang Lee. He stood out resolutely for the privacy of his
+small sleeping apartment, obstinately refusing admission to outsiders.
+
+In a house replete with boarders, and forty miles from available cooks,
+Fang's pending loss was indeed a calamity.
+
+In this dilemma, the disheartened landlord and his wife begged the
+intercession of the star boarder,--always in high favor with the
+domestics, and known to be especially in the good graces of the
+Chinaman. Long did this envoy of peace unsuccessfully besiege the
+bedroom door of the offended Fang Lee. In the end, however, he gained
+admittance; and with adroit appeals to the better nature of the irate
+cook, and a tactful representation of the folly of giving up a good
+situation for the sake of a paltry quarrel, he finally brought Fang Lee
+down from his "high horse," and persuading good-natured Dennis to make
+suitable friendly advances, effectually healed the breach.
+
+Ere nightfall amity reigned in the ranch kitchen, and the respective
+pockets of the belligerents were the heavier for a silver dollar,--a
+private peace-offering contributed by the arbitrator. An Irishman is
+nothing if not magnanimous; Dennis readily "buried the hatchet," handle
+and all.
+
+Not so Fang Lee, who, smugly pocketing his dollar, covertly observed to
+the giver, by way of the last word, "All samee, Pope bigee dam foolee."
+
+With genial satisfaction the star boarder received the thanks of the
+Browns for having saved to them their cook, and, with simple pleasure in
+the result of his diplomacy, met the encomiums of his fellow-boarders.
+
+To this gracious and beautiful nature, replete with "peace and good-will
+to man," to help and serve was but "the natural way of living."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+At mid-March, in this sun-loved land, the genial season far outdoes our
+own belated Northern May. Already, in Mesilla Valley, the peach, pear,
+and apricot buds of the orchard are showing white and pink. In the
+garden, rose-bushes are leaving out, and mocking-birds make the air
+sweet with song.
+
+"In the spring," said Leon Starr, parodying Tennyson one morning at the
+breakfast-table, "the Koshare fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Shalam.
+Why not make to-day our long-planned excursion to that famous colony?"
+
+"All right," responded the entire Koshare; and that afternoon a party of
+twelve set out from Alamo Ranch to explore that remarkable colony, some
+seven miles up the valley.
+
+A description of the place and an account of this excursion is copied
+verbatim by the present writer from the journal of one of the party.
+
+"To begin at the beginning," says the narrator, "the colony was started
+by one Dr. ----, a dentist from Philadelphia. He enlisted as a partner
+in his enterprise a man from that region of fads--Boston, Mass. To this
+chimera of the doctor's brain, the latter, a man of means, lent his
+approval, and, still more to the point, the money to carry out the
+doctor's plans.
+
+"Some few years ago the original founder of Shalam died, leaving to his
+partner the work of carrying out his half-tried experiment.
+
+"Mr. ---- lived on in the place, assuming its entire charge, and finally
+marrying the doctor's widow,--a lady of unusual culture and refinement,
+but having a bent towards occult fads, as Spiritualism, Mental Science,
+and their like.
+
+"Well, we arrived safely at Shalam, and were met by Mrs. ---- and a
+dozen or more tow-headed kids. It is noticeable that the whole
+twenty-seven children selected for this experiment have light hair and
+blue eyes. Mrs. ---- kindly presented us to her husband,--apparently a
+man of refined natural tendencies and fair intellectual culture, but
+evidently, like 'Miss Flite,' 'a little _m-m_, you know.'
+
+"Conventionally clothed, Mr. ---- would undoubtedly have been more than
+presentable; in his Shalam undress suit he was, to say the least,
+unique.
+
+"His long, heavy beard was somewhat unkempt. His feet were in sandals,
+without stockings. His dress consisted of a pair of white cotton pants,
+and a blouse of the same material, frogged together with blue tape, the
+ends hanging down over his left leg. Hitched somehow to his girdle was a
+plain watch-chain, which led to a pocket for his watch, on the front of
+his left thigh, placed just above the knee. When he wants time he raises
+the knee and takes out the watch, standing on one leg the while.
+
+"The place is beautifully situated on the banks of the Rio Grande, with
+a range of high mountains across the river.
+
+"It consists of two parts: 'Leontica,' a village for the workers, where
+they have many nice cottages, an artesian well for irrigation, and a big
+steam pump to force the water through all the ditches; Shalam, the home
+of the children, has a big tank, with six windmills pumping water into
+it all the time. Near the tank is the dormitory,--a building about one
+hundred and fifty feet in dimension. Through its middle runs a large
+hall for the kids to gambol in. On each side are rooms for the
+attendants and the larger children.
+
+"Chiefly noticeable was the cleanliness of the hall, and the signs over
+the doors of the chambers, each with its motto, a text from
+'_Oahspe_,'--the Shalam bible.
+
+"At each end of the hall was a big sign, reading thus: '_Do not kiss the
+children._' As none of them were especially attractive, this command
+seemed quite superfluous. After looking over the dormitory, we were led
+to the main building, projected by the late Dr. ----. This encloses a
+court about one hundred and fifty feet by sixty in size, and planted
+with fig trees.
+
+"The front of the building is taken up by the library of the doctor; on
+the opposite side is his picture gallery.
+
+"Rooms or cells for the accommodation of guests occupy the long sides of
+this structure.
+
+"I was cordially invited to occupy one of these; but the place is too
+creepy for me! The pictures in the gallery were all done by the deceased
+doctor, under the immediate direction of his 'spirit friends.' To look
+at them (believing this) is to be assured that artists do not go to
+heaven, since not even the poorest defunct painter would have
+perpetrated such monstrosities.
+
+"They all represent characters and scenes from the doctor's
+bible,--known as Oahspe, and written by him at the dictation of spirits.
+The drawing is horrible, the coloring worse; and no drunkard with
+delirium tremens could have conceived more frightful subjects!
+
+"Mr. ----, the doctor's successor, is a curious compound of crank and
+common-sense; the latter evinced by his corral and cattle, which we next
+visited. I have never seen so fine a corral nor such handsome horses and
+cattle. They are all blooded stock; many of the cows and calves having
+come from the farm of Governor Morton, in New York State. The cows were
+beautiful, gentle creatures; one of them is the largest 'critter' I ever
+saw, weighing no less than fifteen hundred pounds!
+
+"The county authorities--scandalized by the meagreness of the Shalam
+bill of fare--compelled Mr. ---- to enrich the children's diet with
+milk, and, thus officially prodded, he is trying to give them the best
+in the land.
+
+"The stock department of Shalam seems to be his undivided charge; while
+Mrs. ---- manages the garden. She kindly showed us all over it; and it
+is a beauty! With water flowing all through it, celery, salisfy, and
+lettuce all ready to eat, and other vegetables growing finely. She gave
+us a half bushel of excellent lettuce, which we all enjoyed.
+
+"The Shalam idea is to take these children from all parts of the
+country, to bring them up in accordance with its own dietetic fad (which
+in many respects corresponds with that of our own dream-led Alcott),
+feeding them exclusively on a vegetable diet so that they won't develop
+carnal and combative tendencies, and thus start from them a new and
+improved race. Will they succeed? God knows; but they seem to have
+started wrong; for the children are largely the offspring of outcasts,
+and you can't expect grapes from thistle seed. However, Mr. ---- and
+Mrs. ---- are both sincere, kind-hearted reformers, trying to do what
+they think right in their own peculiar way. They are doing no harm by
+their experiment--hurting no one; and if the children turn out badly, it
+is no worse than they would if left alone; and if well, it is a distinct
+triumph of brain over beastliness. It may be well to state that no
+_materia medica_ is tolerated at Shalam. The health of the colony is
+entrusted absolutely to the 'tender mercies' of mental healing. Mr. ----
+is himself the picture of health, and says he does not know what it is
+to feel tired. ('They that be whole need no physician!') As for the Lady
+of Shalam, there is a look in her face that led me to think she was
+deadly tired of the whole business, but was too loyal either to her dead
+or living husband to 'cry quits.'
+
+"These children know not the taste of physic. All their ailments are
+treated in strict accordance with Mental Science. They eat no eggs,
+fish, or other animal matter, save the county-prescribed milk, living
+solely on grains, vegetables, and fruits; and it must be said that they
+all look extremely healthy. Mr. ---- informs us that he rises daily at
+three A.M., goes directly to his corral and milks, comes in a little
+after four and prepares the children's breakfast. They are called at
+four forty-five, and breakfast at five. At five thirty devotional
+exercises begin, and last until six thirty, when the father of Shalam
+goes out and starts the hands on the farm. At eight the children begin
+lessons or some kind of mental training, which lasts till dinner time.
+
+"After dinner they run wild for the rest of the day.
+
+"We left Shalam at about five P.M. On the homeward drive we discussed
+this odd colony, and compared notes on what we had observed. An
+irreverent member of the party thus summed up the whole business in his
+own slangy fashion,--'a man who all winter long prances round in
+pajamas, making folks shiver to look at him, ought to be put in an
+insane asylum.' So there you have his side of the question.
+
+"The original founder of Shalam, Dr. ----, not only aspired to be a
+painter, but, as an author, flew the highest kind of a kite, giving to
+the world no less than a new bible.
+
+"A glimpse at its high-sounding prospectus will scarce incite in the
+sane and sober mind a desire to peruse a revelation whose absurdity and
+fantastic assumption leaves the Mormon bible far behind, and before
+whose 'hand and glove' acquaintance with the 'undiscovered country'
+Swedenborg himself must needs hide his diminished head.
+
+"Thus it runs: '_Oahspe_; a new Bible in the words of Jehovih and his
+Angel Embassadors. A synopsis of the Cosmogony of the Universe; the
+creation of planets; the creation of man; the unseen worlds; the labor
+and glory of gods and goddesses in the etherean heavens with the new
+commandments of Jehovih to man of the present day. With revelations from
+the second resurrection, found in words in the thirty-third year of the
+Kosmon Era.'
+
+"Oahspe's claims are thus _moderate_: 'As in all other bibles it is
+revealed that this world was created, so in _this_ bible it is revealed
+_how_ the Creator _created_ it. As other bibles have proclaimed heavens
+for the spirits of the dead, behold _this_ bible revealeth _where_ these
+heavens _are_.'
+
+"Oahspe also kindly informs us 'how hells are made, and of what
+material,' and how the sinner is in them mainly punished by the forced
+inhalement of 'foul smells,'--so diabolically foul are these that one is
+fain to hold the nose in the bare reading of them!
+
+"'There is,' declares Oahspe, 'no such law as Evolution. There is no law
+of Selection.' A vegetarian diet is inculcated; and we are gravely
+informed that 'the spirit man takes his place in the first heaven
+according to his _diet_ while on earth!'
+
+"A plan for the founding of 'Jehovih's Kingdom on earth through little
+children' is given. This 'sacred history' claims to cover in its
+entirety no less a period of time than eighty-one thousand years. At
+quarter-past six," concludes our informant, "we arrived, tired and
+hungry, but glad to have gone, and glad to get back, leaving behind us
+Shalam, with its spirit picture-gallery and its fantastic Oahspe, for
+the more stable verities of commonplace existence."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was on Friday that the Koshare made their little excursion to the
+Shalam settlement, and the next evening they gathered in full
+force,--with the exception of the Hemmenshaws and the Harvard man, who
+still remained at Hilton Ranch, losing thereby two of the most
+interesting of the Antiquary's papers; but "time and tide" and Saturday
+clubs "stay for no man," and now came the second Aztec paper.
+
+"The Aztec government," began Mr. Morehouse, "in a few minor points is
+said to have borne some resemblance to the aristocratic system evolved
+by the higher civilization of the Middle Ages.
+
+"Beyond a few accidental forms and ceremonies, the correspondence was,
+however, of the slightest. The legislative power both in Mexico and
+Tezcuco had this feature of despotism; it rested wholly with the
+monarch. The constitution of the judicial tribunals in some degree
+counteracted the evil tendency of this despotism. Supreme judges
+appointed over each of the principal cities by the crown had original
+and final jurisdiction over both civil and criminal cases. From the
+sentence of such a judge there was no appeal to any other tribunal, not
+even to that of the King.
+
+"It is worthy of notice as showing that some sense of justice is inborn;
+as even among this comparatively rude people we read that under a
+Tezcucan prince a judge was put to death for taking a bribe, and another
+for determining suits in his own house (a capital offence also, by law.)
+According to a national chronicler, the statement of the case, the
+testimony, and proceedings of the trial were all set forth by a clerk,
+in hieroglyphical paintings, and handed to the court.
+
+"In Montezuma's day the tardiness of legal processes must have gone
+miles beyond the red tape of a nineteenth-century court of justice.
+
+"This vivid picture of the pomp and circumstance attendant upon the
+confirmation of a capital sentence by the king is presented by one of
+the Mexican native chroniclers:
+
+"'The King, attended by fourteen great lords of the realm, passed into
+one of the halls of justice opening from the courtyard of the palace,
+which was called "the tribunal of God," and was furnished with a throne
+of pure gold, inlaid with turquoises and other precious stones.
+
+"'The walls were hung with tapestry, made of the hair of different wild
+animals, of rich and various colors, festooned by gold rings, and
+embroidered with figures of birds and flowers. Putting on his mitred
+crown, incrusted with precious stones, and holding, by way of sceptre, a
+golden arrow in his left hand, the King laid his right upon a human
+skull, placed for the occasion on a stool before the throne, and
+pronounced judgment. No counsel was employed and no jury. The case had
+been stated by plaintiff and defendant, and, as with us, supported on
+either side by witnesses. The oath of the accused was, with the Aztecs,
+also admitted in evidence.
+
+"'The great crimes against society were all made capital.
+
+"'Among them murder (even of a slave) was punishable with death.
+Adulterers, as among the Jews, were stoned to death. Thieving, according
+to the degree of the offence, was punished with slavery or death. It was
+a capital offence to remove the boundaries of an estate, and for a
+guardian not to be able to give a good account of his ward's property.
+
+"'Prodigals, who squandered their patrimony, were punished. Intemperance
+in the young was punished with death; in older persons, with loss of
+rank, and confiscation of property.
+
+"'The marriage institution was held in reverence among the Aztecs, and
+its rites celebrated with formality. Polygamy was permitted; but
+divorces were not easily obtainable. Slavery was sanctioned among the
+ancient Mexicans, but with this distinction unknown to any civilized
+slave-holding community: no one could be _born_ to slavery. The
+_children_ of the slave were _free_. Criminals, public debtors, persons
+who from extreme poverty voluntarily resigned their freedom, and
+children who were sold by their parents through poverty, constituted one
+class of slaves. These were allowed to have their own families, to hold
+property, and even other slaves. Prisoners taken in war were held as
+slaves, and were almost invariably devoted to the dreadful doom of
+sacrifice. A refractory or vicious slave might be led into the market
+with a collar round his neck, as an indication of his badness, and
+there publicly sold. If incorrigible, a second sale devoted him to
+sacrifice.
+
+"'Thus severe, almost ferocious, was the Aztec code, framed by a
+comparatively rude people, who relied rather on physical than moral
+means for the correction of evil. In its profound respect for the
+cardinal principles of morality, and a clear perception of human
+justice, it may favorably compare with that of most civilized nations.'
+
+"'In Mexico,' says Prescott, 'as in Egypt, the soldier shared with the
+priest the highest consideration. The King must be an experienced
+warrior. The tutelary deity of the Aztecs was the God of war. The great
+object of their military expeditions was to gather hecatombs of captives
+for his altars.' The Aztec, like the (so-called) _Christian crusader_,
+invoked the holy name of religion as a motive for the perpetration of
+human butchery. He, too, after his own crude fashion, had his order of
+knighthood as the reward of military prowess. Whoever had not reached it
+was debarred from using ornaments on his arms or on his person, and was
+obliged to wear a coarse white stuff, made from the threads of the aloe,
+called _nequen_. Even the members of the royal family were not excepted
+from this law. As in Christian knighthood, plain armor and a shield
+without device were worn till the soldier had achieved some doughty feat
+of chivalry. After twenty brilliant actions officers might shave their
+heads, and had, moreover, won the fantastic privilege of painting half
+of the face red and the other half yellow. The panoply of the higher
+warriors is thus described. Their bodies were clothed with a close vest
+of quilted cotton, so thick as to be impenetrable to the light missiles
+of Indian warfare. This garment was found so light and serviceable that
+it was adopted by the Spaniards.
+
+"The wealthier chiefs sometimes wore, instead of this cotton mail, a
+cuirass made of thin plates of gold or silver. Over it was thrown a
+surcoat of the gorgeous feather work in which they excelled. Their
+helmets were sometimes of wood, fashioned like the heads of wild
+animals, and sometimes of silver, on the top of which waved a panache of
+variegated plumes, sprinkled with precious stones. They also wore
+collars, bracelets, and earrings of the same rich materials.
+
+"'A beautiful sight it was,' says one of the Spanish conquerors, 'to see
+them set out on their march, all moving forward so gayly, and in so
+admirable order!'
+
+"Their military code had the cruel sternness of their other laws.
+Disobedience of orders was punished with death.
+
+"It was death to plunder another's booty or prisoners. It is related of
+a Tezcucan prince that, in the spirit of ancient Roman, he put two of
+his sons to death--after having cured their wounds--for violating this
+last-mentioned law. A beneficent institution, which might seem to belong
+to a higher civilization, is said to have flourished in this semi-pagan
+land.
+
+"Hospitals, we are told, were established in their principal cities for
+the cure of the sick, and as permanent homes for the disabled soldier;
+and surgeons were placed over them who 'were,' says a shrewd old
+chronicler, 'so far better than those in Europe that they did not
+_protract the cure in order to increase the pay_.'
+
+"The horse, mule, ox, ass, or any other beast of burden, was unknown to
+the Aztecs. Communication with remotest parts of the country was
+maintained by means of couriers, trained from childhood to travel with
+incredible swiftness.
+
+"Post-houses were established on all the great roads, at about ten
+leagues distance apart. The courier, bearing his despatches in the form
+of hieroglyphical painting, ran with them to the first station, where
+they were taken by another messenger, and so on, till they reached the
+capital. Despatches were thus carried at the rate of from one to two
+hundred miles a day.
+
+"A traveller tells us of an Indian who, singly, made a record of a
+hundred miles in twenty-four hours. A still greater feat in walking is
+recorded by Plutarch. _His_ Greek runner brought the news of a victory
+of a hundred and twenty-five miles in a single day!
+
+"In the funeral rites of this ruder people one traces a slight
+resemblance to those of the more cultivated Greek. They burned the body
+after death, and the ashes of their dead, collected in vases, were
+preserved in one of the apartments of the home. After death they dressed
+the person's body in the peculiar habiliments of his tutelar deity. It
+was then strewed with pieces of paper, which operated as a charm against
+the dangers of the dark road he was to travel. If a chief died he was
+still spoken of as living. One of his slaves, dressed in his master's
+clothes, was placed before his corpse. The face of this ill-starred
+wretch was covered with a mask, and during a whole day such homage as
+had been due to the chief was paid to him. At midnight the body of the
+master was burnt, or interred, and the slave who had personated him was
+sacrificed. Thereafter, every anniversary of the chief's birthday was
+celebrated with a feast, but his death was never mentioned.
+
+"The Spanish chroniclers have told us (and in reading these statements
+due allowance must be made for their habit of 'stretching the truth')
+that to the principal temple--or Teocallis--in the capital five thousand
+priests were in some way attached. These, in their several departments,
+not only arranged the religious festivals in conformity to the Aztec
+calendar, and had charge of the hieroglyphical paintings and oral
+traditions of the nation, but undertook the responsibility of
+instructing its youth. While the cruel and bloody rites of sacrifice
+were reserved for the chief dignitaries of the order, each priest was
+allotted to the service of some particular diety, and had quarters
+provided for him while in attendance upon the service of the temple.
+
+"Though in many respects subject to strict sacerdotal discipline, Aztec
+priests were allowed to marry and have families of their own. Thrice
+during the day, and once at night, they were called to prayers. They
+were frequent in ablutions and vigils, and were required to mortify the
+flesh by fasting and penance, in good Roman Catholic fashion, drawing
+their own blood by flagellation, or by piercing with thorns of aloes.
+They also, like Catholic priests, administered the rites of confession
+and absolution; but with this time-saving improvement: confession was
+made but _once_ in a man's life,--the long arrears of iniquity, past and
+present, thus settled, after offences were held inexpiable.
+
+"Priestly absolution was received in place of legal punishment for
+offences. It is recorded that, long after the Conquest, the simple
+natives, when under arrest, sought escape by producing the certificate
+of their confession.
+
+"The address of the Aztec confessor to his penitent, with his prayer on
+this occasion, has come down to us. As an evidence of the odd medley of
+Christianity and paganism that marked this queer civilization, it is
+quaintly interesting. 'O merciful Lord,' prayed he, 'thou who knowest
+the secrets of all hearts, let thy forgiveness and favor descend, like
+the pure waters of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou
+knowest that this poor man has sinned, not from his own will, but from
+the influences of the sign under which he was born.'
+
+"In his address to the penitent he urges the necessity of instantly
+procuring a slave for sacrifice to the Deity. After this sanguinary
+exhortation he enjoins upon his disciple this beautiful precept of
+Christian benevolence: 'Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, whatever
+privations it may cost thee, for, remember, their flesh is like thine,
+and they are men like thee.'
+
+"Sacerdotal functions (excepting those of sacrifice) were allowed to
+women.
+
+"At a very tender age these priestess girls were committed for
+instruction to seminaries of learning, in which, it is recorded, a
+strict moral discipline for both sexes was maintained, and that, in some
+instances, offences were punished by death itself.
+
+"Thus were these crafty Mexican priests (the Jesuits of their age)
+enabled to mould young and plastic minds, and to gain a firm hold upon
+the moral nature of their pupils. The priests had (as we are told) their
+own especial calendar, by which they kept their records, and regulated,
+to their liking, their religious festivals and seasons of sacrifice, and
+made all their astrological calculations; for, like many imperfectly
+civilized peoples, the Aztecs had their astrology. This priestly
+calendar is said to have roused the holy indignation of the Spanish
+missionaries.
+
+"They condemned it as 'unhallowed, founded neither on natural reason,
+nor on the influence of the planets, nor on the course of the year; but
+plainly the work of necromancy, and the fruit of a contract with the
+devil.'
+
+"We are told that not even in ancient Egypt were the dreams of the
+astrologer more implicitly referred to than in Aztec Mexico.
+
+"On the birth of a child he (the astrologer) was instantly summoned, and
+the horoscope--supposed to unroll the occult volume of destiny--was hung
+upon by the parent in trembling suspense and implicit faith. No
+Millerite in his ascension robe, awaiting the general break-up of
+mundane affairs, ever looked forward with more confidence to the final
+catastrophe than did the ancient Mexican to the predicted destruction of
+the world at the termination of one of their four successive cycles of
+fifty-two years.
+
+"Prescott gives us this romantic account of the festival marking that
+traditional epoch:
+
+"'The cycle would end in the latter part of December; as the diminished
+light gave melancholy presage of that time when the sun was to be
+effaced from the heavens, and the darkness of chaos settle over the
+habitable globe, these apprehensions increased, and on the arrival of
+the five "unlucky days" that closed the year they abandoned themselves
+to despair. They broke in pieces the little images of their household
+gods, in whom they no longer trusted.
+
+"'The holy fires were suffered to go out in the temples, and none were
+lighted in their own dwellings. Their furniture and domestic utensils
+were destroyed, and their garments torn in pieces, and everything was
+thrown into disorder. On the evening of the last day, a procession of
+priests moved from the capital towards a lofty mountain, about two
+leagues distant. They carried with them as a victim for the sacrificial
+altar the flower of their captives, and an apparatus for kindling the
+new fire, the success of which was an augury for the renewal of the
+cycle.
+
+"'On the funeral pile of their slaughtered victim, the _new fire_ was
+started by means of sticks placed on the victim's wounded breast. As the
+light soared towards heaven on the midnight sky, a shout of joy and
+triumph burst forth from the multitudes, who covered the hills, the
+terraces of the temples, and the housetops with eyes anxiously bent upon
+the mountain of sacrifice. Couriers with torches lighted at the blazing
+beacon bore the cheering element far and near; and long before the sun
+rose to pursue his accustomed track, giving assurance that a new cycle
+had commenced its march, altar and hearthstone again brightened with
+flame for leagues around.
+
+"'All was now festivity. Joy had replaced despair. Houses were cleansed
+and refurnished. Dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with
+chaplets and garlands of flowers, the people thronged in gay procession
+to the temples to offer up their oblations and thanksgivings. It was the
+great secular national festival, which few alive had witnessed before,
+or could expect to see again.'
+
+"Although we find in the counsels of an Aztec father to his son the
+following assertion, 'For the multiplication of the species God ordained
+_one_ man _only_ for _one_ woman,' polygamy was nevertheless permitted
+among this people, chiefly among the wealthiest classes.
+
+"Marriage was recognized as a religious ceremony, and its obligations
+strictly enjoined. Their women, we are told, were treated with a
+consideration uncommon among Indian tribes. It is recorded that their
+tranquil days were diversified by the feminine occupations of spinning,
+feather-work, and embroidery, and that they also beguiled the hours by
+the rehearsal of traditionary tales and ballads, and partook with their
+lords in social festivities.
+
+"Their entertainments seem to have been grand and costly affairs.
+Numerous attendants, of both sexes, waited at the banquet; the halls
+were scented with perfumes, flowers strewed the courts, and were
+profusely distributed among the arriving guests.
+
+"As they took their seats at the board, cotton napkins and ewers of
+water were placed before them; for, as in the heroic days of Greece, the
+ceremony of ablution before and after eating was punctiliously observed
+by the Aztecs. The table was well provided with meats, especially game,
+among which our own Thanksgiving bird, the turkey, was conspicuous.
+These more solid dishes were flanked by others of vegetables, and with
+fruits of every variety found on the North American Continent.
+
+"The different viands were skilfully prepared, with delicate sauces and
+pungent seasoning, of which the Mexicans were especially fond. They were
+further regaled with confections and pastry; and the whole was crowned
+by an 'afterclap' of tobacco mixed with aromatic substances, to be
+enjoyed in pipes, or in the form of cigars, inserted in holders of
+tortoise shell or silver. The meats were kept warm by chafing-dishes.
+The table was ornamented with vases of silver (and sometimes of gold) of
+delicate workmanship.
+
+"We are told by the chroniclers that agriculture was, before the
+Conquest, in an advanced state. There were peculiar deities to preside
+over it, and the names of the months and of the religious festivals had
+more or less reference to it. The public taxes were often paid in
+agricultural produce. As among the Pueblos, Aztec women took part in
+only the lighter labors of the field,--as the scattering of the seed,
+the husking of the ripened corn.
+
+"Maize, or Indian corn, the great staple of the North American
+continent, grew freely along the valleys, and up the steep sides of the
+Cordilleras, to the high table-land. Aztecs were, we are told, well
+instructed in its uses, and their women as skilled in its preparation as
+the most expert New England or Southern housewife.
+
+"In these equinoctial regions, its gigantic stalk afforded a saccharine
+matter which supplied them with a sugar but little inferior to that of
+the cane itself (which, after the Conquest, was introduced among them).
+Passing by all their varieties of superbly gorgeous flowers, of
+luxuriously growing plants, many of them of medicinal value, and since
+introduced from Mexico to Europe, we come to that 'miracle of nature,'
+the great Mexican aloe, or _maguey_, which was, in short, meat, drink,
+clothing, and writing material for the Aztec, as from its leaves was
+made their paper, somewhat resembling Egyptian _papyrus_, but more soft
+and beautiful.
+
+"Specimens of this paper still exist, preserving their original
+freshness, and holding yet unimpaired the brilliancy of color in
+hieroglyphical painting. It is averred that the Aztecs were as well
+acquainted with the uses of their mineral as of their vegetable kingdom,
+deftly working their mines of silver, lead, and tin. It has, however,
+been contended by Wilson, in his 'New Conquest of Mexico,' that, in
+spite of Cortez's statement to the contrary, 'it is not to be supposed
+that the Spaniards found the Aztecs in the possession of silver, since
+its mining requires a combination of science and mechanical power
+unknown and impossible to their crude civilization.' He considerately
+allows them the capability of gathering gold from their rich soil.
+
+"Prescott, on the contrary, tells us that 'they opened veins for the
+procurement of silver in the solid rock, and that the traces of their
+labors in these galleries furnished the best indications for the early
+Spanish miners.'
+
+"Who shall decide when doctors disagree? Not, indeed, a Koshare, whose
+laudable purpose it is to eschew the wearisome 'gradgrinds' of history,
+and accept the infinitely more charming conclusions of the romancer.
+
+"Gold, say the chroniclers, was easily gleaned from the beds of their
+rivers, and cast into bars, or in the form of dust, made part of the
+regular tribute of the southern provinces of Montezuma's empire. They
+cast, also, delicately and curiously wrought vessels of gold. Though
+their soil was impregnated with iron, its use was unknown to this
+people. As a substitute for this metal, they used, for their tools, a
+bronze made from an alloy of tin and copper, or of itzli,--a dark
+transparent metal, found in abundance in their hills. With the former
+they could cut the hardest substances, such as emeralds and amethysts.
+
+"It has been contended that an ignorance of the use of iron must
+necessarily have kept the Mexican in a low state of civilization. On the
+other hand, it is urged that iron, if even known, was but little in use
+among the ancient Egyptians, whose mighty monuments were hewn with tools
+of bronze, while their weapons and domestic utensils were of the same
+material. For the ordinary purposes of domestic life, the ancient
+Mexicans made earthenware, and fashioned cups, bowls, and vases of
+lacquered wood, impervious to wet, and gorgeously colored.
+
+"Among their dyes, obtained from both mineral and vegetable substances,
+was the rich crimson of the cochineal, the modern rival of the far-famed
+Tyrian purple. Later, this coloring material was introduced into Europe,
+from Mexico, where the curious cochineal insect was nourished with great
+care on plantations of cactus.
+
+"The Aztecs were thus enabled to give a brilliant coloring to their webs
+of cotton, which staple, in the warmer regions of their country, they
+raised in abundance. With their cotton fabrics, manufactured of every
+degree of fineness, they had the original art of interweaving the
+delicate hair of rabbits and other animals, which made a cloth of great
+warmth as well as beauty.
+
+"On this they often laid a rich embroidery of birds, flowers, or some
+other fanciful device. It is supposed that the Aztec 'silk,' mentioned
+by Cortez, was nothing more than this fine texture of cotton, hair, and
+down.
+
+"But the art in which they especially excelled was their plumage or
+feather-work. Some few existing specimens of this ancient art (one of
+them a vestment said to have been worn by Montezuma himself) have, we
+are told, 'all the charm of Florentine mosaic.'
+
+"The gorgeous plumage of tropical birds, especially of the parrot-tribe,
+afforded every variety of color, and the fine and abundant down of the
+humming-bird supplied them with a finish of soft aerial tints. The
+feathers pasted on a fine cotton web were wrought into dresses for the
+wealthy. Hangings for apartments and ornaments for the temples were thus
+fashioned. Labor was held in honorable estimation among this people. An
+aged Aztec chief thus addressed his son: 'Apply thyself to agriculture,
+or to feather-work, or some other honorable calling. Thus did your
+ancestors before you. Else, how could they have provided for themselves
+and their families? Never was it heard that nobility alone was able to
+maintain its possessor.'
+
+"The occupation of the merchant was held by them in high respect. These
+were of prime consideration in the body politic, and enjoyed many of the
+most essential advantages of an hereditary aristocracy. Mexico, as their
+abundant use among the Aztecs testifies, is especially rich in precious
+stones. It is the land of the emerald, the amethyst, the turquoise, and
+the topaz; and that superbest of gems, the fire opal, is native to its
+generous soil.
+
+"One of Cortez's wedding gifts to his second bride is thus described:
+'This was five emeralds of wonderful size and brilliancy. These jewels
+had been cut by the Aztecs into the shapes of flowers, and fishes, and
+into other fanciful forms, with an exquisite style of workmanship which
+enhanced their original value.'
+
+"It was gossiped at court that the Queen of Charles the Fifth had an eye
+to these magnificent gems, and that the preference given by Cortez to
+his fair bride had an unfavorable influence on the Conqueror's future
+fortunes. Among the 'royal fifth' of the Mexican spoils sent by Cortez
+to the Spanish Emperor, we are told of a still more wonderful emerald.
+It was cut in a pyramidal shape, and of so extraordinary a size that the
+base of it was affirmed to have been as broad as the palm of the hand.
+
+"This rich collection of gold and jewelry, wrought into many rare and
+fanciful forms, was captured on its road to Spain by a French privateer,
+and is said to have gone into the treasury of Francis the First.
+Francis, we are told, looking enviously on the treasures drawn by his
+rival monarch from his colonial domains, expressed a desire to 'see the
+clause in Adam's testament, which entitled his brothers of Spain and
+Portugal to divide the New World between them.'
+
+"The Aztec picture writing, rude though it was, seems to have served the
+nation in its early and imperfect state of civilization.
+
+"By means of it, as an auxiliary to oral tradition, their mythology,
+laws, calendars, and rituals were carried back to an early period of
+their civilization.
+
+"Their manuscripts, the material for which has already been described,
+were most frequently made into volumes, in which the paper was shut up
+like a folding screen. With a tablet of wood at each extremity, they
+thus, when closed, had the appearance of books. A few of these Mexican
+manuscripts have been saved, and are carefully preserved in the public
+libraries of European capitals. The most important of these painted
+records, for the light it throws on the Aztec institutions, is preserved
+in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The greater part of these writings,
+having no native interpretation annexed to them, cannot now be
+unriddled.
+
+"A savant who, in the middle of the seventeenth century travelled
+extensively through their country, asserts that, 'so completely had
+every vestige of their ancient language been swept away from the land,
+not an individual could be found who could afford him the least clue to
+the Aztec hieroglyphics.'
+
+"Some few Aztec compositions, which may possibly owe their survival to
+oral tradition, still survive. These are poetical remains, in the form
+of odes, or relics of their more elaborate prose, and consist largely of
+prayers and public discourses, that show that, in common with other
+native orators, the Aztecs paid much attention to rhetorical effect. The
+Aztec hieroglyphics included both the representative and symbolical
+forms of picture-writing.
+
+"They had various emblems for expressing such things as, by their
+nature, could not be directly represented by the painter; as, for
+example, the years, months, days, the seasons, the elements, the
+heavens, and so on.
+
+"A serpent typified time, a tongue denoted speaking, a footprint
+travelling, a man sitting on the ground an earthquake.
+
+"The names of persons were often significant of their adventures and
+achievement.
+
+"Summing up this account of Aztec civilization, we find that, although
+of the countries from which Toltec and Aztec in turn issued tradition
+has lost the record, it is nevertheless affirmed, by so reliable an
+historian as Humboldt, that the former introduced into Mexico the
+cultivation of maize and cotton; that they built cities, made roads, and
+constructed pyramids. 'They knew,' says this authoritative historian,
+'the uses of hieroglyphical paintings; they could work metals, and cut
+the hardest stones; and they had a solar system more perfect than that
+of the Greeks and Romans.'
+
+"After their mysterious disappearance from the table-lands of Mexico,
+the Aztecs, who succeeded them, gradually amalgamated all that was best
+in their civilization, and, engrafting upon it their own, became as a
+nation what they were in the time of the second Montezuma, when Cortez
+and his conquering army treacherously swept their civilization from the
+face of the earth.
+
+"A thoughtful traveller still finds in Mexico traces of this people, its
+early possessors.
+
+"The Mexicans, in their whole aspect," he observes, "give a traveller
+the idea of persons of decayed fortune, who have once been more
+prosperous and formidable than now, or who had been the offshoot of a
+more refined and forcible people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+It was but the day after the delivery of this most interesting paper by
+Mr. Morehouse, that the laggards from Hilton Ranch, who had missed it,
+and the preceding one, returned to their places at the dinner-table; and
+on that very afternoon Miss Paulina, with all due formality, announced
+the engagement of her niece to Mr. Roger Smith. Recovered from the first
+shock of surprise, the Koshare celebrated the betrothal by a pink
+afternoon tea, and made such slight engagement offerings as were found
+available, remote from silversmith, florist, and bric-à-brac dealer.
+
+The ladies gave bureau scarfs, table doilies, and centre-pieces _ad
+infinitum_; the Antiquary bestowed a bit of Mexican pottery dating back
+to the "cliff-dwellers." Leon framed the photographs of the handsome
+pair in Mexican canes, as an engagement gift; and the most despondent
+"lunger" of them all had a kindly wish for their young and happy
+fellow-boarders, setting out on that beautiful life-journey to whose
+untimely end he, himself, was sadly tending.
+
+Among the more observing of the Koshare, much wonder was expressed at
+the slow mending of Roger Smith's sprained ankle. It was at the
+engagement tea that Miss Paulina innocently said, in response to these
+strictures, "Yes, it _did_ take a long time to cure dear Roger's sprain.
+Years ago," continued the good lady, "I had the same accident; and, if I
+remember rightly, in less than a fortnight after the sprain I was
+walking without any crutches. One would think now," she went on, "that
+in this lovely dry climate a sprain would mend rapidly; but, though I
+did my very best, the result was far less prompt than I had hoped."
+
+"Sprains differ," interposed the audacious subject of these remarks,
+unawed by the disapproving glances of his betrothed; "the surgeons tell
+us that fractures are both simple and compound. Mine, dear Miss
+Hemmenshaw, was undoubtedly compound."
+
+This he said by way of accounting to his friends for his tardy
+convalescence. To himself he thought, looking at this kind, unsuspicious
+new auntie, "Dear, delicious old goose!"
+
+This is what the niece said when, later, she got this incorrigible lover
+to herself: "Roger, I am quite convinced that your conscience is seared
+with a hot iron, whatever that process, supposed to indicate utter moral
+callousness, may be."
+
+"My dear girl," laughed the unabashed culprit, "I am, as you know and
+deplore, a good Catholic, and consequently hold with the astute Jesuit
+Fathers that the end justifies the means."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+It was in the sunny, lengthened days of early March that the Antiquary,
+the Journalist, the star boarder, and the Grumbler undertook their
+long-projected trip to the Sacramento Mountains, there to visit the
+Government Reservation, nestled in the sheltered Mescalero Valley, which
+gives its name.
+
+Well equipped with camping conveniences, the four Koshares set forth on
+their journey of one hundred and twenty-five miles.
+
+It was their intention to "make haste slowly," and nothing could better
+have suited the leisurely pair of Mexican horses, and the equally
+easy-going Mexican driver, who, with his team, had been hired for the
+expedition. The first night of their journey was passed beneath the open
+sky, with the rounded moon riding clear and fair above them, and the
+desert of sand and sage-brush all about them. On the second, they lodged
+at the solitary dwelling of a ranchman, whose nearest neighbor was
+thirty-five miles distant.
+
+At the journey's end, they were cordially received by Lieutenant
+Stottler, Government Agent at the Mescalero Reservation, and throughout
+their visit were treated by him with a kindly hospitality and a genial
+courtesy beyond praise.
+
+Of the Apache, now transformed by the iron hand of civilization from a
+blood-thirsty savage to a passably decent and partially self-supporting
+member of the republic, it has been aptly said that Nature has given him
+"the ear of the cat, the cunning of the fox, and the ferocious courage
+and brutishness of the gray wolf."
+
+The whole vast realm of his native ranges, desert though they seem, are
+known to teem with ever-present supplies for his savage menu.
+
+There are found fat prairie mice, plump angle-worms, gray meat of
+rattlesnake and lizard, and of leathery bronco,--all easy-coming "grist
+for that 'unpernickety' mill," his hungry stomach.
+
+Is he minded for a vegetable diet, for him the mescal lavishly grows;
+and the bean of mesquite, reduced to meal, makes him palatable cakes.
+Fruit of Spanish bayonet dried in the sun, and said thus to resemble
+dates, is at hand for his dessert; and of mountain acorns alone he may
+make an excellent and nutritious meal.
+
+From the primeval years this belligerent savage is said to have
+especially harried that dismal waste in New Mexico known as _Jornado del
+Muerta_, "Journey of Death."
+
+This awful desert is declared to be literally "the battle-ground of the
+elements." In the winter it is made fearful by raging storms of wind and
+snow, in which frozen men and animals leave their bodies, as carrion
+prey, to the hungry mountain wolf. In later times it is "the skulking
+place of unscrupulous outlaws, and many a murdered traveller makes good
+the name it bears."
+
+It is thus finely depicted by a modern traveller: "Near the southern
+boundary of New Mexico stretches a shadeless, waterless plateau, nearly
+one hundred miles long, and from five to thirty miles wide, resembling
+the steppes of northern Asia. Geologists tell us this is the oldest
+country on the earth, except, perhaps, the backbone of Central Africa;
+at least, the one which has longest been exposed to the influence of
+agents now in action. The grass is low and mossy, with a wasted look;
+the shrubs are soap-weed and bony cactus; the very stones are like the
+scoria of a furnace. It is sought by no flight of bird; no bee or fly
+buzzes on the empty air; and, save the lizard and horned frog, there is
+no breath of living thing. One might fancy that this dreary waste had
+served its time, had been worn out, unpeopled, and forgotten."
+
+In the (not long past) day of his power and might, to steal and murder,
+under the show of friendship; to beat out the brains of unsuspecting
+men; to carry off to captivity, worse than death, the women and larger
+children, was, with the Apache, merely a question of opportunity.
+
+In the Apache war--ending in October, 1880, and lasting but a year and a
+half,--it is estimated that more than four hundred white persons were
+scalped and tortured to death with devilish ingenuity.
+
+The details of Indian fighting are everywhere much the same; but in
+strategy and cruelty that of the Apache surpasses all the sons of men.
+Victorio, the chief who led the war with his band, was surrounded at
+last, and captured, and killed in the mountains of Mexico.
+
+With the death of Victorio (whose only son, Washington, was shot in the
+fall of 1879, leaving no one to succeed him) the cause was lost.
+
+His wife, we are told, after Victorio's death, cut off her hair, in the
+old Greek fashion, and buried it,--an offering to the spirit of this
+fallen chief, to whom (devil though he was) she was devoted.
+
+It is told of Rafael, one of Victorio's band, that when maddened by
+_tiswin_ (an intoxicant made by the Indian from corn), he fatally
+stabbed his wife, and, after her death, overcome with penitence,
+sacrificed all his beads and most of his clothes to the "dear departed,"
+cut his and his children's hair short, and sheared the manes and tails
+of his horses. These manifestations of anguish over, he went up into a
+high hill, and howled with uplifted hands.
+
+Women are regarded by the Apaches as an incumbrance. They are of so
+little account that they are not even given a name. Mothers _mourn_ at
+their birth.
+
+The Indians occupying a reservation of seven hundred square miles in
+southern New Mexico, and numbering, at the present writing, about four
+hundred and fifty souls, are typical Apaches, and closely related by
+blood to the other Apaches of Arizona and New Mexico. They exhibit the
+usual race characteristics,--of ignorance, stubbornness, superstition,
+cruelty, laziness, and treachery.
+
+In December, 1894, Lieutenant Stottler first assumed the charge of these
+Indians. In spite of the fact that for many years a generous government
+had supplied them annually with rations, clothing, working implements,
+etc., they were then living in _tepees_, or brush shelters, on the side
+hills; clad in breech-clout and blanket, wearing paint, and long hair,
+and thanklessly receiving their rations of beef, flour, coffee, sugar,
+salt, soap, and baking-powder. A few of them condescended to raise corn
+and oats; but acres of tillable land on the reservation were still
+unused.
+
+"They were," says Lieutenant Stottler, in an able and interesting
+report, "not only contented with this order of things, but desirous and
+determined to prolong it indefinitely."
+
+Fifty per cent of their children were in school, but the parents were
+wholly opposed to their education. Among them were twenty strong,
+broad-shouldered Indian adults, educated at the expense of thousands of
+dollars, yet still running about the reservation in breech-clout and
+blanket, wilder than any uneducated Indian on it.
+
+The girls were held from school, and at ten and twelve years of age were
+traded for ponies, into a bondage worse than any known slavery.
+
+Fourteen Indian policemen are allowed the agent. Their especial duty is
+to see that the herd of beef cattle for their own eating is properly
+cared for. The police, each had a cabin to live in; but each, in scorn
+of this civilized innovation, had carefully planted alongside of his
+cabin a _tepee_ to sleep in. To get these policemen into civilized
+clothing, under threat of duress, and to order all _tepees_ away from
+their cabins, was the agent's first move. Next, it was decided that all
+children five years old and upwards _must_ be placed in school at the
+beginning of the school year, whether the parents were willing or not.
+Every Indian man was ordered to select a piece of land, and put in his
+posts. To break up the influence of chiefs or bands, who, claiming the
+whole country, deterred the people from work, by threats, appears to
+have been up-hill work; "but now," says the agent (in 1897), "there are
+no chiefs, and 'work or starve' is the policy." Formerly, government
+supplies of clothing, wagons, harness, and utensils, as soon as issued,
+had been packed on burros and sold for a mere song to settlers about the
+reservation. This abuse was promptly stopped, as also was the making of
+_tiswin_.
+
+This native drink, made from Indian corn, is said to be more maddening
+in its effect than any other known intoxicant; Indians brutalized by
+_tiswin_ fought, as do our own drunkards, and often wounded or killed
+each other. For corn to make this detestable beverage, an Indian would
+trade away the last article in his possession.
+
+It was proclaimed by the agent that the maker of this poison would be
+imprisoned for six months, at hard labor, in the guard-house. This
+stopped its manufacture, and there are no longer drunken Indians at the
+reservation. Occasionally they still get liquor at Las Cruces, when sent
+there for freight.
+
+All supplies are hauled from the railroad over-land. The distance is one
+hundred and ten miles; about one hundred thousand pounds are annually
+brought in this way to the reservation, and without harm or loss. Much
+of the Indian's savagery lies (like Samson's strength) in his hair; to
+his long, matted tresses he clings tenaciously. As a beginning,
+Lieutenant Stottler induced one old fellow--a policeman--with the
+reward of a five-dollar gold piece to cut his precious locks. Thus
+metamorphosed, he became "the cynosure of all eyes." His squaw made life
+a burden to him; and thus badgered, he, in turn, pestered the agent to
+get the entire police force to cut theirs.
+
+It was long before the general consent to part with these cherished
+tresses could be won; and it became necessary to put some of the Indians
+in the guard-house to accomplish this reform. Finally, orders were asked
+from Washington, and received, compelling submission to the shearing.
+
+When the Indians saw the Washington order, they all gave in, with the
+exception of a last man, who had to be "thumped into it." Their hair
+well cut, a raid was made on breech-clout and blanket. Now they all
+appear in civilized clothing. This seems to have been the turning-point
+in their wildness.
+
+"Now," says the agent, "they come and ask for scissors and comb to cut
+their hair, and volunteer the information that they were 'fools to
+oppose it.'"
+
+About half a dozen of these Indians were found by Lieutenant Stottler
+with two wives; since none others were permitted, this matrimonial
+indulgence, polygamy, is, consequently, dying a natural death at
+Mescalero. It is found hard to control the ancient practice of dropping
+a wife and taking up another without the troublesome formality of a
+divorce, which has practically the same result as polygamy. In spite of
+the slip-shodness of the marriage-tie among the Indians, "they are,"
+says the Lieutenant, "about as badly henpecked as it is possible to
+imagine. Not by the wife, however; but by that ever dreaded being, her
+mother." He gives in his paper a most amusing account of the relation
+between the son-in-law and this much-maligned treasure of our higher
+civilization. "Just why it is," he says, "no Indian has ever been able
+to explain to me, but an Indian cannot look at his mother-in-law.
+
+"If she enters his _tepee_, he leaves; if he enters and she is within,
+he flees at once. He cannot stay in her august presence. If his wife and
+he quarrel, his mother-in-law puts in an appearance, and manages his
+affairs during his enforced absence so long as she pleases. Perhaps she
+takes his wife to her own _tepee_, where he dare not follow. In this
+dilemma, he either comes to terms, or the situation constitutes a
+divorce.
+
+"Does the agent wish a child brought to school, or a head of a family to
+take land, and try to farm it, the mother-in-law, if hostile (and she
+usually is), appears on the scene. Then the head of the family hunts the
+woods for refuge.
+
+"The sight of several stalwart bucks hiding behind doors, barrels, and
+trees, because a dried-up, wizened squaw heaves in sight, is a spectacle
+that would be ludicrous, were it not for its far-reaching results. As an
+Indian may take, in succession, many wives, who still stand to his
+credit, the agent has, practically, many mothers-in-law to contend with.
+Consequently, these family magnets have been officially informed that
+the guard-house awaits any of them who may be found maliciously
+interfering with the families of their children.
+
+"Hard labor added to this sentence, it is hoped, may at length have the
+effect of breaking up this absurd superstition."
+
+By this account it may be seen that "one of the most far-fetched notions
+that ever entered into the minds of men" is found domesticated among the
+Mexican aborigines. It is asserted, as a chronological fact, that the
+Mexican Pueblos "invented the mother-in-law joke gray ages before it
+dawned upon our modern civilization."
+
+The lamented Cushing, in his account of the "restful, patriarchal,
+long-lonely world" of his research, tells us that he found the
+mother-in-law a too pronounced factor in the Zuni family circle; and, as
+we know, in our own higher civilization the mother-in-law, held in
+good-natured reprobation, serves to point many a harmless jest.
+
+White enthusiasts--with whom the "wrongs of the Indian" are a standing
+grievance--but imperfectly realize the difficulty of taming these
+savages, getting them well off the warpath, and making them cleanly and
+self-supporting. It may, therefore, be well to present the side shown us
+by the agent in his able paper of statistical facts.
+
+"The Apache tribe," he tells us, "has one hundred and sixteen children
+at school,--nineteen at Fort Lewis, Colorado, and ninety-seven at the
+reservation boarding-school. Each child has one-half day in class and
+one-half day of industrial work. The girls take their turns in the
+laundry, sewing-room, and kitchen, and at dormitory work. The boys do
+the heavy work in the kitchen and laundry, chop the wood, and till the
+farm under the charge of the industrial teacher. All the vegetables for
+their use are raised on the farm, and the surplus sold.
+
+"The aim of the school is to teach the rising generation of Apaches how
+to make a living with the resources of the reservation, and, in time, to
+become self-supporting.
+
+"To this end useful rather than fancy trades are taught. Boys are
+detailed with the blacksmith and carpenter, to learn the use of common
+tools. To do away with the inborn contempt of the aboriginal male for
+the women of his tribe, boys and girls at the reservation are not only
+trained to study, recite, and sit at meals with girls, but a weekly
+'sociable' is held for the scholars.
+
+"On such nights they have games and civilized dances. Every boy is
+required formally to approach and request, 'Will you dance this dance
+with me?' and to offer his partner his arm when the reel, quadrille,
+etc., is finished, and escorting her to her seat, leave her with a
+polite 'thank you.'"
+
+In the agent's report for the years 1896-97, "this year," he says, "the
+Indian boys raised twenty-five thousand pounds beets, twenty thousand
+pounds cabbage, one thousand pounds cauliflower, five hundred pounds
+turnips, one thousand four hundred pounds celery, five hundred pounds
+radishes, one thousand four hundred pounds of onions, nineteen thousand
+pounds of pumpkins and squash, four hundred pounds of peas, nine hundred
+and sixty pounds of corn, six thousand five hundred pounds of potatoes,
+besides cucumbers, pie-plant, and asparagus.
+
+"The school has a pen of swine, a flock of chickens, and a fine herd of
+milch cows; and all the hay and fodder for them and the horses are
+raised on the farm. Oats and corn are purchased from the Indians, who,
+in 1895, raised one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
+
+"The adult Indians," he adds, "cut this year one hundred and sixty cords
+of wood for the school, for which I paid them two dollars and fifty
+cents per cord. In the winter of 1896 the industry of blanket-making was
+introduced into the reservation. Navajo blanket-makers were employed to
+teach to the Mescalero women their incomparable method of carding,
+spinning, and dyeing wool, and weaving blankets. Twenty of the
+Mescaleros," boasts the agent, "can to-day make as good blankets as the
+Navajos themselves.
+
+"The reservation is mountainous, and one of the finest sheep ranges in
+the country. Government has allowed five thousand sheep for general
+distribution at the reservation, and in addition, five hundred head for
+the school; where a room is now set aside for the looms of the older
+girls, who will, in their turn, become instructors in this useful art.
+This puts into their hands another opportunity to become
+self-supporting."
+
+The visitors from Mesilla Valley were kindly admitted behind the scenes
+at the reservation, to make acquaintance with its people, both old and
+young; and were highly interested and entertained by the picturesqueness
+of the Indian character.
+
+The Grumbler had brought his camera along. He was a skilled amateur
+photographer, and had offered his services in that capacity to the
+little party.
+
+To bring his household under the focus of that apparatus was no easy
+task for the courteous agent. An Indian is nothing if not a believer in
+witches. In his aboriginal mode of life witch-hunting and
+witch-punishing are among his gravest occupations. He pursues them with
+a vigorous hand, and with a superstitious zeal equal to that of the most
+persistent white man in the palmiest days of Salem witch-hunting and
+witch-burning. The Mescaleros, to a soul, are believers in witchcraft.
+The camera, as might be seen from its effect, was plainly bewitched.
+They would have none of it.
+
+The school children, having no choice, must needs range themselves in
+scared, sullen rows, and be "took" under compulsion.
+
+Suspiciously eying the operator, they sullenly took their prescribed
+pose, and heedless of the immemorial request, "Now look pleasant," went
+sourly through the terrible ordeal.
+
+Some of the older girls, pleased with the novelty, submitted more
+cheerfully; but the younger pupils, looking askance at the white men,
+covered their faces, so far as was possible, with hair, or hands, and
+were thus providentially carried safely through this process of
+bewitchment.
+
+Some of the schoolboys had fine, intelligent faces; of others, the
+Grumbler subsequently observed that "they were the kind that grow up and
+scalp white settlers."
+
+A curious young squaw, from the opened slit of her _tepee_, watched the
+approach of the party with their bedevilled machine. Her position was
+excellent; but no sooner had the operator arranged his camera for a snap
+shot at this picturesque subject, than, with a scared yell, the woman
+bounded out of range, closing behind her the aperture--her front door.
+
+The result was merely an uninteresting view of an Indian _tepee_, which
+is like nothing more than a mammoth ant-hill, minus the symmetry and
+nice perpendicular of that more intelligently fashioned structure.
+
+Two incorrigible squaws in "durance vile" for making _tiswin_, as they
+sullenly served their sentence of hard labor at the reservation
+woodpile, looked defiantly up from their task of chopping fuel, and
+scowled viciously at the witch machine and its abettors.
+
+They, however, succeeded in getting a fairly good picture of these
+hideous-faced beings, as "withered and wild" as the uncanny sisters who
+brewed "hell broth" before the appalled Macbeth, beneath the midnight
+moon, on Hampton Heath.
+
+A mild-eyed Indian woman, whose peaceful occupation was to scrub the
+reservation floors, kindly submitted to the bother of being put into a
+picture, along with the insignia of her office,--a scrubbing-pail.
+
+Not so "Hot Stuff," a highly picturesque squaw, claiming the proud
+distinction due to the "oldest inhabitant." This "contrairy" female,
+impervious to moral suasion, was finally induced to pose before the
+terrible "witch-thing" by the threat of having her rations withheld
+until her consent to be "taken" was obtained. Scared and reluctant, she
+was at last photographed; but required Lieutenant Stottler to protect
+her with his arm through the perils of this unfamiliar ordeal. This he
+good-naturedly did, and is immortalized along with this aged squaw.
+
+After an interesting visit of two nights and a day at the reservation,
+the Koshare turned their faces towards Mesilla Valley, where, after two
+uneventful days, they arrived in safety, full of the novelties
+encountered, charmed with the courteous and gentlemanly agent, but
+wearied with the long ride, and heartily glad to return to white
+civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was at the close of the week succeeding that of the little journey
+across the mountains that the Koshare held their last Saturday evening
+session. To punctuate the finality of this gathering, a variation from
+the usual programme was proposed by the Antiquary. Members of the Club
+were requested to supplement his brief paper by giving such written or
+verbal statements, along the same line as their own research might
+enable them to make. To this proposal many of the Koshare had agreed,
+and had come well primed for lively discussion.
+
+The attendance was unusually full, nearly all the boarders, in addition
+to the regular Club members, being in attendance.
+
+The Antiquary led with the following interesting paper, which, as he
+explained, was, in a way, supplementary to those on the Aztecs.
+
+"As the Tezcucans were of the family of the Aztecs," began Mr.
+Morehouse, "and are said far to have surpassed them in intellectual
+culture and the arts of social refinement, some slight notice of their
+civilization may not prove irrelevant.
+
+"Ixtilxochitl is the uneuphonious name of the native chronicler,
+purporting to be a lineal descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco, who
+has given us his highly colored narrative of the Tezcucan civilization.
+It may be prefaced with the information that Ixtilxochitl (who
+flourished so late as the century of the Conquest) has had his
+reputation so torn to tatters by the critics of later years that he has,
+figuratively, 'not a leg to stand on.'
+
+"But as Prescott commends his 'fairness and integrity,' and says 'he has
+been followed, without misgiving, by such Spanish chroniclers as could
+have access to his manuscripts,' without attempting to settle the vexed
+question of the probability of its details (which are a combination of
+'Munchausen' and 'Arabian Nights'), we also will follow his marvellous
+story of the Tezcucan Prince Nezahualcoyotl. Passing lightly over the
+fascinating chapter of that prince's romantic adventures,--his
+marvellous daring, his perilous escapes from the fierce pursuit of the
+usurper Maxtla, and the dethronement and violent end of that
+bloody-minded monarch,--we come to the time when Nezahualcoyotl,
+restored to the throne of his fathers, is firmly established in the love
+and fealty of his people, and may turn his attention to the production
+of the odes and addresses handed down in Castilian by his admiring
+descendant Ixtilxochitl. This admirable monarch was, we are informed,
+'the Solon of Anahauc.' His literary productions turn, for the most
+part, on the vanity and mutability of human life, and strikingly embody
+that Epicurean poetic sentiment, expressed, at a later time, by our own
+English poet, Herrick, in such verses as 'Gather ye rose-buds while ye
+may.'
+
+"'Banish care,' sings the royal Tezcucan bard; 'if there be bounds to
+pleasure, the saddest life must also have an end. Then wear the chaplet
+of flowers, and sing thy songs in praise of the all-powerful God; for
+the glory of the world soon fadeth away.
+
+"'Rejoice in the green freshness of thy spring; for the day will come
+when thou wilt sigh for these joys in vain. Yet the remembrance of the
+just' (piously adds the poet) 'shall not pass away from the nations; and
+the good thou hast done shall ever be held in honor.' And
+anon,--returning to his _Epicurean_ 'muttons,'--he sings: 'Then gather
+the fairest flowers in the gardens to bind round thy brow, and seize the
+joys of the present ere they perish.'
+
+"An English translation of one of Nezahualcoyotl's odes has been made
+from the Castilian. It harps upon the same old string, as also do his
+prose essays, which have less literary merit than his verse. We are told
+by his panegyrist that not all the time of this incomparable monarch was
+passed in dalliance with the muse, but that he won renown as a warrior,
+and in the interests of peace also fostered the productive arts that
+made his realm prosperous, as agriculture, and the like practical
+pursuits. Between times he appears to have looked well after the
+well-being of his children, who, in numbers, rivalled the progeny of our
+modern patriarch, Brigham Young. It is recorded that by his various
+wives this monarch had no less than sixty sons and fifty daughters. (One
+condones his disgust with life!) The Tezcucan crown, however, descended
+to the children of his one legal wife, whom he married late in life. The
+story of his wooing and winning this fair lady is almost an exact
+counterpart of the Bible account of King David's treacherous winning of
+Uriah's beautiful consort.
+
+"It is related of Nezahualcoyotl, that having been married for some
+years to this unrighteously obtained wife, and not having been blest
+with issue by his beautiful queen, the priests persuaded him to
+propitiate the gods of his country--whom he had pointedly neglected--by
+human sacrifice. He reluctantly consented; but all in vain was this
+mistaken concession. Then it was that he indignantly repudiated these
+inefficient Pagan deities.
+
+"'These idols of wood and stone,' said he, 'can neither hear nor feel;
+much less could they make the heavens, and the earth, and man, the lord
+of it. These must be the work of the all-powerful unknown God, creator
+of the universe, on whom alone I must rely for consolation and support.'
+He thereupon withdrew to his rural palace, where he remained forty days,
+fasting and praying at stated hours, and offering up no other sacrifice
+than the sweet incense of copal, and aromatic herbs and gums.
+
+"In answer to his prayer, a son was given him,--the only one ever borne
+by his queen. After this, he made earnest effort to wean his subjects
+from their degrading religious superstition, building a temple, which he
+thus dedicated: 'To the Unknown God, the _Cause_ of _Causes_.' No image
+was allowed in this edifice (as unsuited to the 'invisible God'), and
+the people were expressly prohibited from profaning its altars with
+blood, or any other sacrifice than that of flowers and sweet-scented
+gums. In his old age the king voiced his religious speculations in hymns
+of pensive tenderness.
+
+"In one of these, he thus piously philosophizes: 'Rivers, torrents, and
+streams move onward to their destination. Not one flows back to its
+pleasant source. They must onward, hastening to bury themselves in the
+bosom of the ocean. The things of yesterday are no more to-day, and the
+things of to-day shall cease to-morrow. The great, the wise, the
+valiant, the beautiful,--alas, where are they?'"
+
+"The compositions of Nezahualcoyotl," observed the Grumbler, as the
+Antiquary folded away his finished paper, "though strictly founded on
+fact, are not exhilarating. His family was too large; and the wonder is,
+not that his odes and hymns are depressing, but that he should have the
+heart to 'drop into poetry' at all!"
+
+"We are told," rejoined the Journalist, "by his descendant with the
+unpronounceable name, that once in every four months his entire family,
+not even excepting the youngest child, was called together, and orated
+by the priesthood on the obligations of morality, of which, by their
+exalted rank, they were expected to be shining examples. To these
+admonitions was added the compulsory chanting of their father's hymns."
+
+"Poor beggars!" pitied the Grumbler; "how they must have squirmed under
+this ever-recurring royal 'wet blanket!'"
+
+"You forget," said Leon Starr, coming to the rescue of the poet-father,
+"that in view of their inevitable mortality the bard had already advised
+them to 'banish care, to rejoice in the green freshness of their spring;
+to bind their brows with the fairest flowers of the garden, seize the
+joys of the present, and'--in short, had given them leave to have no end
+of larks, which, of course, they naturally and obediently did."
+
+"It is a noteworthy fact," observed Mr. Morehouse, "that many
+aborigines--though but scantily supplied with clothing, as the natives
+of Samoa and the Sandwich Islanders--take great delight in adorning the
+body with flowers. To this liking the Tezcucan king especially appeals
+in his odes and hymns. The Mexicans have from time immemorial doted on
+flowers. This taste three hundred years or more of oppression has not
+extinguished."
+
+"Do you remember, dear," asked Mr. Bixbee, turning to his wife, "the
+flower market in the Plaza at Mexico?" (The pair had, a year or two
+earlier, explored that city)--"that iron pavilion partly covered in with
+glass, and tended by nut-brown women and smiling Indian girls?"
+
+"Shall I ever forget it?" was her enthusiastic response. "The whole
+neighborhood was fragrant with perfume of vases of heliotrope, pinks,
+and mignonette; and such poppies, and pansies, and forget-me-nots I
+never elsewhere beheld!"
+
+"One can believe in absolute floral perfection," said the Journalist,
+"in a country which embraces all climates. 'So accurately,' observes
+Wilson, 'has nature adjusted in Mexico the stratas of vegetation to the
+state of the atmosphere, that the skilful hand of a gardener might have
+laid out the different fields, which, with their charming vegetation,
+rise, one above another, upon the fertile mountain sides of the
+table-land.'
+
+"Along with many other important vegetable growths, the cotton-plant is
+supposed to be indigenous to Mexico, as Cortez, on his first landing,
+found the natives clothed in cotton fabrics of their own manufacture.
+Its culture continues to the present day, but with very little
+improvement in method since the earlier time of the Spanish Conquest."
+
+"And now," asked the Harvard man, "since we are on the subject of
+Mexican natural floral products, may I speak my little piece, which I
+may call, 'What I have learned about the Cactus'?"
+
+The Koshare graciously assenting, Roger Smith thus began:
+
+"In Mexico the cactus is an aboriginal and indigenous production.
+Several hundred varieties are identified by botanists. A beautiful sort
+is Cereus grandiflora. As with us, this variety blooms only at night;
+its frail, sweet flower dying at the coming of day. The cactus seems to
+grow best in the poorest soil. No matter how dry the season, it is
+always juicy. Protected by its thick epidermis, it retains within its
+circulation that store of moisture absorbed during the wet season, and
+when neighboring vegetation dies of drought is still unharmed. Several
+varieties of cactus have within their flowers an edible substance, which
+is, in Monterey, brought daily to market by the natives. That species
+of cactus which combines within itself more numerous uses than any known
+vegetable product is known as the maguey, or century plant.
+
+"Upon the Mexican mountains it grows wild as a weed; but as a domestic
+plant it is cultivated in little patches, or planted in fields of
+leagues in extent. Its huge leaf pounded into a pulp makes a substitute
+both for cloth and paper. The fibre of the leaf, when beaten and spun,
+forms a silk-like thread, which, woven into a fabric, resembles linen
+rather than silk. This thread is now, and ever has been, the sewing
+thread of the country. From the leaf of the maguey is crudely
+manufactured sailcloth and sacking; and from it is made the bagging now
+in common use.
+
+"The ropes made from it are of that kind called manila. It is the best
+material in use for wrapping-paper. When cut into coarse straws, it
+forms the brooms and whitewash brushes of the country, and as a
+substitute for bristles it is made into scrub-brushes, and, finally, it
+supplies the place of hair-combs among the common people. So much for
+the cactus leaf; but from its sap arises the prime value of the plant.
+
+"From this is made the favorite intoxicating drink of the common people
+of Mexico. This juice in its unfermented state is called honey water.
+When fermented it is known as pulque. The flowering maguey, the 'Agava
+American,' is the century plant of the United States.
+
+"In its native habitat the plant flowers in its fifteenth year, or
+thereabout; and we are assured that nowhere, as is fabled, does its
+bloom require a long century for its production. The juice of the maguey
+is gathered by cutting out the heart of the flower of the central stem,
+for whose sustenance this juice is destined. A single plant, thus
+gingerly treated, yields daily, for a period of two or three months,
+according to the thriftiness of the plant, from four to seven quarts of
+the honey water, which, before fermentation, is said to resemble in
+taste new sweet cider.
+
+"Large private profit accrues to the owner of maguey estates, and the
+government excise derived from the sale of the liquor is large. Pulque
+is the lager of the peon. It was the product of the country long before
+the time of the Montezumas; and Ballou tells us that 'so late as 1890
+over eighty thousand gallons of pulque were daily consumed in the city
+of Mexico.'
+
+"It is said to be the peculiar effect of pulque to create, in its
+immoderate drinkers, an aversion to other stimulants; the person thus
+using it preferring it to any and all other drinks, irrespective of
+cost."
+
+The Minister followed Roger Smith with an account of a famous tree of
+Mexico.
+
+"It was at Papotla," said this much-travelled invalid, "a village some
+three miles from that capital, that we saw this remarkable tree, which
+is called 'The Tree of the Noche Triste' (the Dismal Night), because
+Cortez in his disastrous midnight retreat from the Aztec capital is said
+to have sat down and wept under it. Be that as it may, the Noche Triste
+is undoubtedly a tree of great age. It is of the cedar family, broken
+and decayed in many parts, but still enough alive to bear foliage.
+
+"In its dilapidated condition it measures ten feet in diameter, and
+exceeds forty feet in height. Long gray moss droops mournfully from its
+decaying branches, and, taken altogether, it is indeed a dismal tree.
+
+"It is much visited, and held sacred and historic by the people, who
+guard and cherish it with great care."
+
+"It calls up singular reflections," commented the Journalist, "to look
+upon a living thing that has existed a thousand years, though it be but
+a tree. Though so many centuries have rolled over the cypresses of
+Chapultepec, they are yet sound and vigorous.
+
+"These trees are the only links that unite modern and ancient American
+civilization; for they were in being when that mysterious race, the
+Toltecs, rested under their shade; and they are said to have long been
+standing, when a body of Aztecs, wandering away from their tribe in
+search of game, fixed themselves upon the marsh at Chapultepec, and,
+spreading their mats under these cypresses, enjoyed in their shadow
+their noontide slumber. Then came the Spaniards to people the valley
+with the mixed races, who respected their great antiquity, so that
+during all the battles that have been fought around them they have
+passed unharmed, and amid the strife and contentions of men have gone
+quietly on, adding many rings to their already enlarged circumference.
+'Heedless,' says Wilson, 'of the gunpowder burned over their heads and
+the discharge of cannon that has shaken their roots, as one ephemeral
+Mexican government succeeded another, these cypresses still remain
+unharmed, and may outlive many other dynasties.'"
+
+"Apropos of the subject," said the Antiquary, "Nezahualcoyotl, according
+to his descendant, the native historian, embellished his numerous villas
+with hanging gardens replete with gorgeous flowers and odoriferous
+shrubs. The steps to these charming terraces--many of them hewn in the
+natural porphyry, and which a writer who lived in the sixteenth century
+avers that he himself counted--were even then crumbling into ruins.
+Later travellers have reported the almost literal decay of this
+wonderful establishment. Latrobe describes this monarch's baths (fabled
+to have been twelve feet long by eight wide) as 'singular basins,
+perhaps two feet in diameter, and not capacious enough for any monarch
+larger than Oberon to take a ducking in.'
+
+"The observations of other travellers confirm this account. Bullock
+tells us that some of the terraces of this apparently mythical palace
+are still entire; and that the solid remains of stone and stucco
+furnished an inexhaustible quarry for the churches and other buildings
+since erected on the site of that ancient Aztec city.
+
+"Latrobe, on the contrary, attributes these ruins to the Toltecs, and
+hints at the probability of their belonging to an age and a people still
+more remote. Wilson, on the other hand, positively accords them to the
+Phoenicians."
+
+"In reading up on this famous empire, Tezcuco," said Leon Starr, "one is
+inclined to believe that every vestige of this proud magnificence could
+not possibly have been obliterated in the short period of three
+centuries, leaving on the spot only an indifferently built village,
+whose population of three hundred Indians, and about one hundred whites,
+maintain themselves in summer by gardening, and sending in their canoes
+daily supplies of 'herbs and _sullers_' (whatever this last may be) to
+Mexico, and, in winter, by raking the mud for the 'tegnesquita,' from
+which they manufacture salt."
+
+"Wilson," said the Grumbler, "tells us that 'the Tezcucan descendant of
+an emperor "lied like a priest."' However that may be, one cannot quite
+swallow his own relation 'in its entirety.'"
+
+"Right you are," responded the Harvard man; "and now here is Miss
+Norcross, waiting, I am sure, to cram us still further with Mexican
+information."
+
+"It is only," said this modest little lady, "some bits that I have
+jotted down about Mexican gems;" and shyly producing her paper, she thus
+read:
+
+"In enumerating the precious stones of Mexico,--the ruby, amethyst,
+topaz, and garnet, the pearl, agate, turquoise, and chalcedony,--one
+must put before them all that wonder of Nature,--the Mexican fire opal,
+which, though not quite so hard as the Hungarian or the Australian opal,
+excels either of them in brilliance and variety of color. Of this
+beautiful stone Ballou has aptly said, 'It seems as if Nature by some
+subtle alchemy of her own had condensed, to form this fiery gem, the
+hoarded sunshine of a thousand years.' He tells us that, in his Mexican
+travels he saw an opal, weighing fourteen carats, for which five
+thousand dollars was refused. 'Really choice specimens,' he goes on to
+say, 'are rare. The natives, notwithstanding the abundance of opals
+found in Mexico, hold tenaciously to the price first set upon them.
+Their value ranges from ten dollars to ten hundred.'
+
+"In modern times, as we all know, a superstition of the unluckiness of
+the stone long prevailed. Now, the opal has come to be considered as
+desirable as it is beautiful, and, endorsed by fashion, takes its
+rightful place among precious gems. A London newspaper states that a
+giant Australian opal, oval in shape, measuring two inches in length, an
+inch and a half deep, and weighing two hundred and fifty carats, is
+destined to be given to King Edward the Seventh; and that Mr. Lyons, the
+giver, a lawyer of Queensland, desires that it should be set in the
+King's regalia of the Australian federation. The London lapidaries
+believe it to be the finest and largest opal in the world.
+
+"Its only rival in size and beauty is the Hungarian opal, possessed by
+Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria. This gem is known as the 'Imperial
+opal,' and is said, in its rainbow beauty, to display the blended colors
+of the ruby, the emerald, and the amethyst.
+
+"What is termed the 'fire' of the gem appears to burn in its remotest
+depths, with a glow and fervor which at times seem to convert the stone
+from the opaque to the semi-transparent."
+
+"We have in our own family," said Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw,
+supplementing this account, "a rare Mexican opal. Long, long ago, it was
+given as an engagement ring to my mother's youngest sister, by her
+lover, who, while travelling in Mexico, had secured this exquisite stone
+for a betrothal pledge. On the very eve of her wedding-day my beautiful
+Aunt Margaret died of an unsuspected heart-disease. The old superstition
+of the unluckiness of the opal being then dominant, my aunt's superb
+ring was laid by as a thing malignant as beautiful.
+
+"As a child I was sometimes allowed to take this sad memento of my dead
+aunt from its nest of cotton wool and admire its harmful splendor. At my
+mother's death it descended, along with all her own jewels, to me, her
+only daughter. Now that we have outlived the foolish superstition in
+respect to this precious stone, I have made up my mind," said the good
+aunt, beaming kindly on her niece, "to take this ring from the Safety
+Vault, on our return to Boston, and make it one of my wedding gifts to
+this dear child."
+
+"Many thanks, dear ladies," said Mrs. Bixbee, as Miss Paulina ended,
+"for your talks about the opal. It is my favorite among precious stones.
+I even prefer it to the diamond, as something warmer and more alive. I
+am glad that its character is looking up in these days."
+
+"All the same," said Mrs. Fairlee, complacently turning on her slim
+white finger a superb Hungarian sapphire, "nothing would tempt me to
+wear a stone even suspected of uncanniness. Trials and crosses, of
+course, will befall one, but it seems to me foolhardy to wear jewels
+supposed to attract misfortune, and, for my part, I am still suspicious
+of opals; and were I King Edward, I shouldn't thank my loyal Australians
+for the gift of an ill-omened jewel, however costly and beautiful."
+
+"Well," commented the Journalist, "every one for his fancy; mine, I
+confess, is to 'mouse round' among musty book-shelves. Looking over my
+portable store of odds and ends for something relevant to this evening's
+discussion, I came upon this extract from the 'Voyages of one "Thomas
+Page,"'--a black letter copy of whose long-forgotten book, printed in
+London, in 1677, is still extant. As a curious picture of the times, it
+is not without an especial value; and, with your approval, I will now
+read it:
+
+"This account must be prefaced with the explanation that Thomas Page was
+an English Dominican, who, as a missionary-monk, with his brother
+Dominicans travelled to his destination in Manila, by the road across
+Mexico, landing, by the way, at Vera Cruz, and there depositing some
+illustrious fellow-voyagers.
+
+"'When we came to land,' says this quaintly circumstantial writer, 'all
+the inhabitants of the city had congregated in the Plaza to receive us.
+The communities of monks were also there, each one preceded by a large
+crucifix,--the Dominicans, the San Franciscans, the Mercedarios,--in
+order to conduct the Virey (the Viceroy) of Mexico as far as the
+Cathedral.
+
+"'The Jesuits and friars from the ships leaped upon the shore from the
+ships. Many of them (the monks) on stepping on shore, kissed it,
+considering that it was a holy cause that brought them there,--the
+conversion of the Indians, who had before adored and sacrificed to
+demons; others kneeled down and gave thanks to the Virgin Mary and other
+saints of their devotion, and then all the monks hastened to incorporate
+themselves with their respective orders in the place in which they
+severally stood. The procession, as soon as formed, directed itself to
+the Cathedral, where the consecrated wafer (called in the English
+original the bread God) was exposed upon the high altar, and to which
+all kneeled as they entered.... The services ended, the Virey was
+conducted to his lodgings by the first Alcalde, the magistrate of the
+town, and judges, who had descended from the capitol to meet him,
+besides the soldiers of the garrison and the ships. Those of the
+religious orders that had just arrived were conducted to their
+respective convents, crosses, as before, being carried at the head of
+each community.
+
+"'Friar John presented us [his missionaries] to the Prior of the Convent
+of San Domingo, who received us kindly, and directed sweetmeats to be
+given us; and also there was given to each of us a cup of that Indian
+beverage which the Indians call chocolate. "This," the good friar tells
+us, "was but a prelude to a sumptuous dinner, composed of flesh and fish
+of every description, in which there was no lack of turkeys and capons.
+This feast," he naïvely apologizes, "was not set out for the purpose of
+worldly ostentation, but to manifest to us the abundance of the
+country."
+
+"'The Prior of Vera Cruz,' he informs us, 'was neither old nor severe,
+as the men selected to govern communities of youthful religious orders
+are accustomed to be. On the contrary, he was in the flower of his age,
+and had all the manner of a joyful and diverting youth. His fathership,
+as they told us, had acquired the Priory by means of a gift of a
+thousand ducats, which he had sent to the Father Provincial. After
+dinner he invited some of us to visit his cell, and then it was we came
+to know the levity of his life....
+
+"'The cell of the Prior was richly tapestried, and adorned with feathers
+of birds of Michoacan; the walls were hung with various pictures of
+merit; rich rugs of silk covered the tables; porcelain of China filled
+the cupboards and sideboards; and there were vases and bowls containing
+preserved fruits and most delicate sweetmeats.
+
+"'Our enthusiastic companions did not fail to be scandalized at such an
+exhibition, which they looked upon as a manifestation of worldly vanity,
+so foreign to the poverty of a begging friar....
+
+"'The holy Prior talked to us only of his ancestry, of his good parts,
+of the influence with the Father Provincial; of the love which the
+principal ladies and the wives of the richest merchants manifested to
+him, of his beautiful voice, of his consummate skill in music. In fact,
+that we might not doubt him in this particular, he took the guitar and
+sung a sonnet which he had composed to a certain _Amaryllis_. This was a
+new scandal to our newly arrived _religious_, which afflicted some of
+them to see such libertinage in a prelate, who ought, on the contrary,
+to have set an example of penance and self-mortification, and should
+shine like a mirror in his conduct and words.... In the Prior's cell of
+the Convent of Vera Cruz' (concluded this character sketch) 'we listened
+to a melodious voice, accompanied with a harmonious instrument, we saw
+treasures and riches, we ate exquisite confectioneries, we breathed
+amber and musk, with which he had perfumed his syrups and conserves. O,
+that delicious Prior!' exclaims our English monk, the humor of the
+situation overcoming his horror of the scandalous behavior of the
+ecclesiastic."
+
+"And now," said the Minister, producing some leaves of sermon-like
+script, "may I call your attention, my friends, to the striking
+analogies found in the religious usages and belief of the
+Aztec,--correspondent with those of the Christian,--some of which I have
+considered in this little paper?
+
+"One of the most extraordinary coincidences with Christian rites may, I
+think, be traced in their ceremony of naming their children,--the Aztec
+baptism. An account of this rite, preserved by Sahagan, is thus put into
+English:
+
+"'When everything,' says the chronicler, 'necessary for the baptism had
+been made ready, all the relations of the child were assembled, and the
+midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism. After a
+solemn invocation, the head and lips of the infant were touched with
+water, and a name was given it; while the goddess Cioacoatl, who
+presided over childbirth, was implored that "the sin which was given to
+this child before the beginning of the world might not visit the child,
+but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew."
+This,' continues the narrator, 'is the exact formula used: "O my child!
+take and receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life,
+and is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash
+and purify. I pray that these heavenly drops may enter into your body
+and dwell there, that they may destroy and remove from you all the sin
+which was given to you at the beginning of the world.
+
+"'She then washed the body of the child with water. This done, "He now
+liveth," said she, "and is born anew; now is he purified and cleansed
+afresh, and our Mother Chalchioitlyene (the goddess of water) again
+bringeth him into the world." Then taking the child in both hands, she
+lifted him towards heaven, and said, "O Lord, thou seest here thy
+creature, whom thou hast sent into the world, this place of sorrow, and
+suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and inspiration;
+for thou art the Great God, and with thee is the great goddess." Torches
+of pine illuminated this performance, and the name was given by the same
+midwife, or priestess, who baptized him.'
+
+"The difficulty of obtaining anything like a faithful report of these
+rites from the natives," said the Minister, "was complained of by the
+Spanish chroniclers, and no doubt led them to color the narrative of
+these (to them) heathen rites and observances with interpolations from
+their own religious belief. 'The Devil,' said one of these bewildered
+missionary monks, 'chose to imitate the rites of Christianity, and the
+traditions of the chosen people, that he might allure his wretched
+victims to their own destruction.' Leaving these monkish annalists to
+their own childish conclusions, and absurd interpretations of the Aztec
+religious analogies, we pass on to the tradition of the Deluge, so
+widely spread among the nations of the Old World, the Hebrew account of
+which was thus travestied by these semi-barbarians. Two persons, they
+held, survived this historical flood,--a man named Coxcox, and his wife.
+Their heads are represented in ancient paintings, together with a boat
+floating on the waters.
+
+"Another tradition (which is credited by Humboldt) affirms that the boat
+in which Typi (their Noah) weathered the flood was filled with various
+kinds of animals and birds, and that, after some time, a vulture was
+sent out by Typi, to reconnoitre,--as was done in the Hebrew flood,--but
+remained feeding on the dead bodies of the giants which had been left on
+the earth as the waters subsided. The little humming-bird,
+Huitozitsilin, was then sent forth, and returned with a twig in his
+mouth. The coincidence of this account with the Bible narrative is
+worthy of remark.
+
+"On the way between Vera Cruz and the capital stands the tall and
+venerable pyramidal mound called the temple of Chulola. It rises to the
+height of nearly one hundred and eighty feet, and is cased with unburnt
+brick. The native tradition is that it was erected by a family of giants
+who had escaped the great inundation, and designed to raise the building
+to the clouds; but the gods, offended by their presumption, sent on the
+pyramid fires from heaven, and compelled the giants to abandon their
+attempt.
+
+"This story was still lingering among the natives of the place at the
+time of Humboldt's visit to it. The partial coincidence of this legend
+with the Hebrew account of the tower of Babel cannot be denied. This
+tradition has also its partial counterpart in the Hebrew Bible.
+Cioacoatl, 'our lady and mother, the first goddess who bringeth forth,'
+who is by the Aztecs believed to have bequeathed the sufferings of
+childbirth to women as the tribute of death, by whom sin came into the
+world, was usually represented with a serpent near her, and her name
+signified the 'Serpent-woman.'
+
+"This fable, as will be seen, reminds us of the 'Eve' in the Hebrew
+account of the Fall of Man. The later priestly narrators, minded to
+improve upon this honest Aztec tradition, gave the Mexican Eve two sons,
+and named them Cain and Abel.
+
+"In this Aztec rite, coming down to us through tradition, the Roman
+Catholics recognized a resemblance to their especial ceremony of
+Christian Communion. An image of the tutelary deity of the Aztecs was
+made of the flour of maize, mixed with blood; and after consecrating by
+the priests, was distributed among the people, who, as they ate it,
+showed signs of humiliation and sorrow, declaring it was the flesh of
+the deity.
+
+"We are told by a Mexican traveller, Torquemeda, a Spanish monk, that,
+later on, when the Church had waxed mighty in the land, the simple
+Indian converts, with unconscious irony, called the Catholic wafer 'the
+bread-God.'"
+
+Here the discussion was, for a moment, interrupted by the withdrawal of
+Miss Mattie Norcross and her invalid sister, who, wearied with long
+sitting, had dropped her tired head upon her sister's shoulder and gone
+quietly to sleep.
+
+As the Grumbler rose to open the door for the two, all present might see
+the courteous air of protection and kindly sympathy which accompanied
+this simple bit of courtesy. Evidently, the Grumbler had met his fate at
+Alamo Ranch.
+
+"And now," said the star boarder, coming finally into the talk, "since
+Mr. Morehouse has kindly condensed for us the history of the aboriginal
+Mexican from the far-off day of the nomadic Toltec to the splendid reign
+of the last Montezuma,--treacherously driven to the wall by the crafty
+Cortez, when the Spaniard nominally converted the heathen, overthrew his
+time-honored temples, rearing above their ruins Christian churches, and,
+intent to 'kill two birds with the same stone' filled his own pockets,
+and swelled the coffers of far-off Spain with Aztec riches,--I have
+thought it not irrelevant to take a look at the humble native Mexican as
+he is found by the traveller of to-day.
+
+"First, let me say that it has been asserted of Mexico that 'though
+geographically near, and having had commercial relations with the world
+for over three hundred years, there is probably less known of this
+country to-day than of almost any other claiming to be civilized.' 'To
+the Mexicans themselves,' declares an observing traveller, 'Mexico is
+not fully known; and there are hundreds of square miles in South Mexico
+that have never been explored; and whole tribes of Indians that have
+never been brought in contact with the white man.'
+
+"Mexico may well be called the country of revolutions, having passed
+through thirty-six within the limit of forty years. In that
+comparatively short period of time no less than seventy-three rulers,
+'drest in a little brief authority,' have played their parts upon the
+Mexican stage until the curtain dropped (too often in blood) upon their
+acts, and they were seen no more.
+
+"Humboldt, in the seventeenth century, pronounced the fairy-like
+environs of the city of Mexico 'the most beautiful panorama the eye ever
+rested upon.' On the table-land of this country the traveller is, at
+some points, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. At such
+heights the air is so rarefied that the least physical effort well-nigh
+deprives the traveller of breath. 'Through this rarefied atmosphere all
+the climates and productions of the world,' it has been affirmed, 'are
+embraced within the scope of a single bird's-eye view.' In portions of
+the country the _vomito_ renders the climate especially unkindly to the
+alien.
+
+"We are told that three quarters of the present Mexican population can
+neither read nor write, possess little or no property, and can form no
+intelligent ideas of political liberty, or of constitutional government.
+
+"The degraded condition of the laboring classes is imputed in a measure
+to the constitutional inertia of a race who have no climatic conditions
+to contend with in their life-struggle; whose simple wants are easily
+satisfied, and who (it may be inferred) never know that 'divine
+discontent' which is the fulcrum on which the higher civilization turns.
+The manner of living, among this class, is thus described by Wells:
+
+"'Their dwellings in the cities are generally wanting in all the
+requirements of health and comfort, and consist mostly of rooms on the
+ground-floor, without proper light or ventilation, often with but the
+single opening for entrance. In such houses there is rarely anything
+answering to the civilized idea of a bed, the occupants sleeping on a
+mat, skin, or blanket, on the dirt floor. There are no chairs or tables.
+There is no fireplace or chimney, and few or no changes of raiment; no
+washing apparatus or soap, and in fact no furniture whatever, except a
+flat stone with a stone roller to grind their corn, and a variety of
+earthen vessels to hold their food and drink, and for cooking, which is
+generally done over a small fire within a circle of stones outside, and
+in front of the main entrance to the dwelling.
+
+"'Their principal food is _tortillas_,--a sort of mush made of soaked
+and hand-ground Indian corn, rolled thin, and then slightly baked over a
+slow fire. Another staple of diet is boiled beans (_frijoles_). Meat is
+seldom used by laborers; but when it is attainable, every part of the
+animal is eaten. Should one be so fortunate as to have anything else to
+eat, the _tortilla_ serves as plates, after which service the plates are
+eaten. When their simple needs are thus satisfied,' says this observing
+traveller, 'the surplus earnings find their way into the pockets of the
+pulque or lottery-ticket sellers, or into the greedy hands of the
+almost omnipresent priest.'
+
+"These lotteries are, we are told, operated by the Church, and form one
+of its never-failing sources of income, proving even more profitable
+than the sale of indulgences.
+
+"The idolatrous instinct, inherited from far-off Aztec ancestors,
+decidedly inclines the native Mexican to a worship that has its pictures
+and images, and its bowings before the Virgin and countless hosts of
+saints, and the priest finds him an easy prey.
+
+"'While we were in the country,' says Ballou, 'a bull-fight was given in
+one of the large cities on a Sunday, as a benefit towards paying for a
+new altar-rail to be placed in one of the Romish churches.'
+
+"Religious fanaticism takes root in all classes in Mexico, even among
+the very highest in the land. It is recorded of the Emperor
+Maximilian--a man of elegant manners, and of much culture and
+refinement--that he walked barefoot on a day of pilgrimage to the shrine
+of the Virgin of Guadaloupe,--distant some two or three miles from the
+city of Mexico, over a dusty, disagreeable road.
+
+"It is but fair to add, in conclusion," said Leon Starr, "that it is
+asserted of the cultivated classes of Mexico that they are not at all in
+sympathy with the extortions and other irregularities of their
+priesthood."
+
+With these interesting statistics ended the last effort of the New
+Koshare to combine improvement and entertainment.
+
+Hard upon this more solid delight-making followed the last afternoon
+tea, the lighter Thursday evening entertainment, and the final
+shooting-match. All these gatherings took on a tinge of sadness from the
+certainty that the little winter family, brought together by Fate at
+Alamo Ranch, were so soon to separate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Spring had now well come. In the shade it was already more than summer
+heat. Fortunately there is, in New Mexico, no such thing as sun-stroke;
+and one moves about with impunity, though the mercury stands at fervid
+heights.
+
+It was on All Fools' day that the star boarder, accompanied by a little
+party of the Koshare,--made up to escort him as far on his homeward way
+as El Paso,--turned his back upon the loveliness of Mesilla Valley.
+
+Through all this "winter of their discontent" Leon had lent himself
+heartily to the work of delight-making; and the saddest of them all had
+been cheered by his genial atmosphere. What wonder if to these it was
+but a dolorous leave-taking; and that amid the general hand-shaking some
+eyes were wet, and some partings said with big lumps that would rise in
+swelling throats! A good face was, however, put upon it all; and even
+Fang, Dennis, and the chore-boy, sent a blessing and a cheery good-bye
+in the wake of the favorite boarder.
+
+As for the small Mexican herd-boy,--who, with his best clean face, had
+come up to the ranch to look his last upon the adored white man under
+whose tuition he had become "a mighty hunter before the Lord,"--he
+simply "lifted up his voice and wept."
+
+Following hard upon this departure came the general break-up of the
+Koshare circle. The Hemmenshaws, with the bridegroom elect, Roger Smith,
+were the next to depart. Miss Paulina, as may be inferred, turned her
+face Bostonward with her heart in her mouth, in view of that account of
+her chaperonage to be rendered to the father whose daughter she had, as
+it were, handed over to the grandson of a tanner.
+
+And here the historian, asking leave to interrupt for a moment the
+routine of the narrative, informs the gentle reader that that august
+personage, Col. Algernon Hemmenshaw, was ultimately placated; and that
+if a tanner's descendant bearing the non-illustrious name of Smith was
+not altogether a desirable graft for the Hemmenshaw ancestral tree, a
+fortune of more than a round million tipped the balance in his favor,
+and the permitted engagement came out in early May-time. Beacon Hill, at
+its announcement, threw up its hands in amazement and distaste. "To
+think," it exclaimed, "that Louise Hemmenshaw, who might have had her
+pick among our very oldest families, should take up with the grandson of
+a tanner!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out on the mesa it is early nightfall. The little day-time flutter and
+stir of moving things has, with the setting sun, given place to silence
+and rest.
+
+A rounded moon looks serenely down upon the grey sage-brush, the
+mesquite-bushes, on the lonely stretch of sandy desert. The last gleam
+of day has faded from the Organ Mountains, leaving them to dominate, in
+sombre grandeur, the distant landscape. In the warm, haunted silence of
+this perfect night two lovers saunter slowly along the mesa.
+
+These happy beings are not unknown to us. The lady is from Marblehead;
+the other has before-time been dubbed the Grumbler.
+
+The name no longer fits the man. His defective lung has righted itself
+in this fine New Mexican atmosphere. No more is he at odds with fate; he
+has become sincerely in love with life, with the climate, and, most of
+all, with the sweet little teacher from Marblehead. They are to be
+married early in June.
+
+The climate admirably suits the invalid sister, and it is hoped that in
+this fine dry air her well lung may remain intact, and so serve her for
+years to come. The Grumbler, having money enough to order his residence
+to his liking, has determined to settle permanently in New Mexico.
+
+To that end he has, for the time, rented the Hilton place. Later, he
+intends to lay out "as a gift for his fair" the ranch of her dreams.
+Here, in the beautiful Mesilla Valley, we may predict that the married
+pair, like the enchanting couples of fairyland, will "live happy ever
+after."
+
+And now it but remains for the chronicler of the New Koshare to take
+leave of "the land of sunshine."
+
+A backward glance at the half-deserted Alamo shows us a dreary handful
+of incurables still tilting their piazza-chairs against its adobe front,
+warming their depleted blood in the grateful sunshine, and each, as best
+he may, accepting the inevitable.
+
+Long, long ago it was that the Pueblos made that traditional journey
+"from Shipapu to the centre of their world" with the heaven-provided
+Koshare, in particolored attire, and fantastic head-dress of withered
+corn-husks, jesting and dancing before them to lift and lighten the
+weary road. Yet since then, through all the centuries, the
+"Delight-Maker," in one shape or another, has been in requisition in
+every land beneath the sun.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alamo Ranch, by Sarah Warner Brooks
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40471 ***