Part 12

The Pueblo de Taos consists of two great mud buildings (of the larger of which an engraving is given) facing each other from opposite banks of a stream, and perhaps two hundred yards apart. They rise to a height of about fifty feet, and seem to have attained their present size by accretions during the ages since they were founded. They are of an irregular pyramidal form, and made up of about five stories or terraces. Each new story is built a distance from the edge of the one immediately beneath, so that both the length and breadth of the building diminish as the height is increased. To enter the rooms we must ascend one of the many ladders that lean against the wall, and then descend another ladder through a hole in the roof. Everything was quiet and silent about this great human wasps' nest. Nude children tumbled on the ground in the warm rays of the sun; men strolled lazily hither and thither, their bodies wrapped in gaudy blankets and legs encased in close-fitting sheepskin leggings, while to their hair, black as jet and brought down in a lock on each side, hung great bunches of zephyr or other gay material; women, dressed in much the same manner, carried on their heads the earthen water-jars, or large baskets of bread, which had been baked in the oval mud ovens ranged in front of the pueblo. Everybody treated us with quiet respect, and seemed pleased to respond to our salutations. We climbed over one of the ancient piles, mounting to its topmost story on shaky ladders, peering into its rooms, which we were courteously invited to enter, and where we found sometimes as many as a dozen Indians sitting on the floor, engaged in adding some last touches to the holiday garments. We saw few young men, but afterwards learned that they were in the _estufas_, or underground council-chambers, preparing for the next day's spectacle.

To give anything like an adequate account of the festival would require a small volume. Early on that resplendent September morning the human tide began to pour in, till, from our position on the summit of the north pueblo, we looked down to the plaza below on a surging mass of fully three thousand Indians and Mexicans, in every gay and fantastic garb. The fruit-vendors had established themselves in scores of little stalls scattered over the plaza, and with their burros standing patiently by, added a picturesque feature to the scene. Three hundred mad young Mexicans, mounted on excited ponies, charged among the crowd in a body, dared each other in feats of horsemanship, or "ran the _gallo_" on the opposite bank. The padre from Santa Fe first held service in the little church, after which came the event of the day. One hundred naked and painted Indians issued in solemn march from an _estufa_, and began the race, two by two, over the straight track a thousand feet long. For an hour and a half they sped up and down in front of the pueblo, amid the wildest excitement of the spectators. Then the march of the victors, to the music of a wild chant, while bread is showered upon them from one of the roofs of the pueblo under which they pass, closes the morning's ceremonies.

The afternoon is consumed by the antics of seven unclothed and curiously painted clowns. For three hours do they amuse that motley crowd with their mimic cock and bull fights, and their semblance of plowing, threshing, and other familiar labors. As the sun nears the west, the rabble gather about a pole, fifty feet high, over the cross-piece at whose top has been hung a living sheep, together with garlands of fruit and a basket of bread. After many pretended failures, the pole is climbed, and the bread and fruit are thrown to the ground. Last of all, the sheep, in which a spark of life still lingers, is detached, and strikes the earth with a sickening thud. With yells and strange cries the Indians rush in, the sheep is torn limb from limb, and with this, the only revolting part of the entire celebration, the _fête_ ends.

The lava-caps away down the valley were glowing golden as we rode back to Fernandez. Thought was busy with the strange events of the day. During how many centuries had these onlooking hills witnessed the gathering throngs of such festivals, since were laid the foundations of those dusky piles, now bathed in sunset glory, where tradition says the cultured hero Montezuma was born, and whence he set out on his prophetic career? And can this ancient people long withstand the civilization that is fast bearing down on them; or will it not soon engulf them and fill with modern life the sacred valley?

* * * * *

On our arrival at Embudo we found the Madame in much tribulation. Not that any harm had befallen her; but the cook, from being an assistant after a fashion, had immediately on our departure developed into an absolute dependent. This personage had for some time been a subject of much solicitude and serious discussion in our family circle. We could sympathize with his infirmities, but when they became the ever-present shield to the most aggravated laziness, our philosophy weakened. And so, when the Madame had explained his apparently total collapse, our decision was speedily reached. In spite of his protestations and his phenomenal physical improvement, we lifted him by main force on to the first train, and shipped him northward without our blessing.

Concerning this Amos, the Madame wrote as follows to her friend, Mrs. McAngle: "He was the 'Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance,' in our vocabulary of nicknames. His face was a suggestion of martyrdom done in coffee-color, for he was a darkey of uncertain and speckled hue; and his religious possessions, a couple of books of devotion of the most melancholy kind, kept him up to his model. Everything had been put into our kitchen-car before leaving Denver, pell-mell; and when, at our first evening's halt, I went out to investigate, I found Amos sitting on a soap-box, in the midst of a chaos of utensils and packages of provisions, almost weeping at the water-splashed confusion, without making the least movement toward straightening matters. He brought with him two encumbrances,--a fifteen years' experience on the Sound steamer _Bristol_ (so he said), and his Rheumatism, with a very big R.

"He was a good enough cook when he tried to be, but wholly averse to neatness. Becoming tired of seeing things that bore no relation to one another on an intimate acquaintance, as the bacon and flour, for instance, I undertook, with fear and trembling, some mild expostulation. But I had not gone far before he raised himself to all his dignity, and exclaimed, 'I have served fifteen years as first cook on board the _Bristol_,' and then turned his back upon me. Somewhat stunned, but persevering, I continued meekly to tell him the things I wished him to attend to. Instantly his tone changed from indignation to supplication, and he described in feeling terms his rheumatism. 'He enjoyed a neat kitchen as well as anybody, but what could he do, having his joints all knotted up with this terrible disease?' and his face grew sadder than ever. I retired from the field vanquished, and reported progress.

"The gentlemen were not so easily silenced, however, and that very day began a little investigation. 'Amos, can you make a tapioca pudding?' cried one, at lunch. 'I have been fifteen years chief cook on the _Bristol_,' came the answer, with an upward roll of the prayerful eyes. A little later: 'Amos, bring up a pail of fresh water from the creek.' Very glad to oblige you, sir (a groan), but I've the rheumatics.' When one excuse wouldn't answer the other would. So we sent him off, and got Burt in his place,--a youth without rheumatism or record,--who proved to be a very bright, willing, and useful boy."

X

TOLTEC GORGE.

I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. --KING LEAR.

Having at last turned our heels reluctantly on the simple-hearted, prettily-chequered life of the Pueblos, we raced back in a single night to the plains of San Luis. A long line of telegraph poles stretches out from Antonito into a true vanishing point across the park, and the train follows it San Juanward. The noble Sangre de Cristo looms up higher and higher behind us as we proceed, a mirage lifting the line of cottonwoods along the Rio Grande into impossibly tall and spindling caricatures of trees; while the Jemez mountains away to the south are not yet lost to view, and the striking landmark of Mount San Antonio, smooth and round, is close at hand. A few miles beyond it the arid level of the lake-spread plain breaks into white, stony eminences, reared in a bold front. To surmount these the track is arranged in long, ingenious loops, in one place, known as the "Whiplash," extending into three parallel lines, scarcely a stone's throw apart, but disposed terrace-like on the hillside. On top of the mesa the sage-brush disappears, grass, piñons and yellow pines taking its place, and we begin to wind among the long, straight lava ridges at the foot of the divide between the Los Pinos and the Chama, whence the backward view is remarkably fine. The road here is like a goat's path in its vagaries, and wagers are made as to the point of the compass to be aimed at five minutes in advance, or whether the track on the opposite side of the _crevasse_ is the one we have just come over, or are now about to pursue.

Describing a number of large curves around constantly deepening depressions, we reached the breast of a mountain, whence we obtained our first glimpse into Los Pinos valley; and it came like a sudden revelation of beauty and grandeur. The approach had been picturesque and gentle in character. Now we found our train clinging to a narrow pathway carved out far up the mountain's side, while great masses of a volcanic conglomerate towered overhead, and the face of the opposing heights broke off into bristling crags. The river sank deeper and deeper into the narrowing vale, and the space beneath us to its banks was excitingly precipitous. We crowded upon the platform, the outer step of which sometimes hung over an abyss that made us shudder, till some friendly bank placed itself between us and the almost unbroken descent. But we learned to enjoy the imminent edge, along which the train crept so cautiously, and begrudged every instant that the landscape was shut out by intervening objects.

To say that the vision here is grand, awe-inspiring, painfully impressive or memorable, falls short of the truth in each case. It is too much to take in at once, and we were glad to pause again for a little brain-rest at a telegraph station, hung almost like a bird's nest among the rocks,--to grow used by degrees to the stupendous picture spread before us. We were so high that not only the bottom of the valley, where the silver ribbon of the Los Pinos trailed in and out among the trees, and underneath the headlands, but even the wooded tops of the further rounded hills were below us, and we could count the dim, distant peaks in New Mexico.

Six miles ahead lay the cañon of which we had heard so much,--the Toltec Gorge, whose praises could not be overdrawn. Evidently his majesty had entrenched himself in glories beside which any ordinary monarch would lose his magnificence. Was this king of cañons really so great he could afford to risk all rivalry? Here, on the left, what noble martello-tower of native lava is that which stands undizzied on the very brink of the precipice? I should like to roll it off, and watch it cut a swath through that puny forest down there, and dam up the whole stream with its huge breadth. How these passages of spongy rock resound as our engine drags the long train we have again mounted through their lofty portals! How narrow apparently are these curved and smooth embankments that carry us across the ravines, and how spidery look the firmly-braced bridges that span the torrents! All the way the road-bed is heaped up or dug out artificially. It is merely a shelf near the summit. It hugs the wall like a chamois-stalker, creeping stealthily out to the end of and around each projecting spur; it explores every in-bending gulch, boldly strides across the water channels, and walks undismayed upon the utmost verge, where rough cliffs overhang it, and the gulf sinks away hundreds of feet beneath.

In the most secluded nook of the mountains we come upon Phantom Curve, with its company of isolated rocks, made of stuff so hard as to have stood upright, tall, grotesque, and sunburned, beside the pigmy firs and cowering boulders with which they are surrounded. Miles away you can trace these black pinnacles, like sentinels, mid-way up the slopes; but here at hand they fill the eye, and in their fantastic resemblance to human shapes and things we know in miniature, seem to us crumbled images of the days when there were giants, and men of Titanic mold set up mementoes of their brawny heroes,--

"Achaian statues in a world so rich!"

_Phantoms_, they are called, and the statuesque shadows they cast, moving mysteriously along the white bluffs, as the sun declines, are uncanny and ghost-like, perhaps; but the brown, rough, grandly grouping monoliths of lava themselves, are no more phantoms than are the pyramids of Sahara, and beside them the Theban monuments of the mighty Rameses would sink into insignificance.

Winding along the slender track, among these solemn forms, we approach the gorge, the vastly seamed and wrinkled face of whose opposite wall confronts us under the frown of an intense shade,--unused to the light from all eternity; but on this, the sunny side, a rosy pile, lifts its massive head proudly far above us, its square, fearless forehead,--

"Fronting heaven's splendor, Strong and full and clear."

How should we pass it? On the right stood the solid palisade of the sierra, rising unbroken to the ultimate heights; on the left the gulf, its sides more and more nearly vertical, more and more terrible in their armature of splintered ledges and pike-pointed tree-tops,--more often breaking away into perpendicular cliffs, whence we could hurl a pebble, or ourselves, into the mad torrent easily seen but too far below to be heard; and as we draw nearer, the rosy crags rise higher and more distinct across our path. We turn a curve in the track, the cars leaning toward the inside, as if they, too, retreated from the look down into that "vasty deep," and lo! a gateway tunneled through,--the barrier is conquered!

The blank of the tunnel gives one time to think. Pictures of the beetling, ebony-pillared cliffs linger in the retina suddenly deprived of the reality, and reproduce the seamed and jagged rocks in fiery similitude upon the darkness, in a twinkling the impression fades, and at the same instant you catch a gleam of advancing light, and dash out into the sunshine,--into the sunshine only? Oh, no, out into the air,--an awful leap abroad into invisibly bounded space; and you catch your breath, startled beyond self-control!

Then it is all over, and you are still on your feet, listening to the familiar ring of the brown walls as they fly past.

What was it you saw that made your breathing cease, and the blood chill in your heart with swift terror? It is hard to remember; but there remains a feeling of an instant's suspension over an irregular chasm that seemed cut to the very center of the earth, and, to your dilated eye, gleamed brightly at the bottom, as though it penetrated even the realms of Pluto. You knew it opened outwardly into the gorge, for there in front stood the mighty wall, bracing the mountain far overhead, and below flashed the foaming river. This is the sum of your recollection, photographed upon your brain by a mental process more instantaneous than any application of art, and never to be erased. Gradually you conclude that the train ran directly out upon a short trestle, one end of which rests in the mouth of the tunnel, and the other in the jaws of a rock, cutting. This is the fact; but the traveler reasons it out, for he cannot see the support beneath his car, which, to all intents, takes a flying bound across a cleft in the granite eleven hundred measured feet in depth.

Our train having halted, the Artist sought a favorable position for obtaining the sketch of Toltec Gorge which adorns these pages, the Photographer became similarly absorbed, and the remaining members of the expedition zealously examined a spot whose counterpart in rugged and inspiring sublimity probably does not exist elsewhere in America. A few rods up the cañon a thin and ragged pinnacle rises abruptly from the very bottom to a level with the railway track. This point has been christened Eva Cliff, and when we had gained its crest by dint of much laborious and hazardous climbing over a narrow gangway of rocks, by which it is barely connected with the neighboring bank, our exertions were well repaid by the splendid view of the gorge it afforded.

Just west of the tunnel, and close beside the track, the rocks have been broken and leveled into a small smooth space, and here, on the 26th of September, 1881, that gloomiest day in the decade for our people, were celebrated as impressive memorial services for GARFIELD, the noble man and beloved president, then lying dead on his stately catafalque in Cleveland, as were anywhere seen. The weather itself, in these remote and lonely mountains, seemed in unison with the sadness of the nation, for heavy black clouds swept overhead, and the wind made solemn moanings in the shaken trees. It was under circumstances so fittingly mournful that an excursion party, gathered from nearly every state in the Union, paused to express the universal sorrow, and to conceive the foundation of the massive monument which catches the traveler's eye on the brink of the gorge, and upon whose polished tablet are engraved these words:

XI

ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER.

There in the gorges that widen, descending From cloud and from cold into summer eternal, Gather the threads of the ice-gendered fountains,-- Gather to riotous torrents of crystal, And giving each shelvy recess where they dally The blooms of the north and its evergreen turfage. --BAYARD TAYLOR.

Though the climax of the pass to the sight-seer is Toltec Gorge, the actual crest of the Pinos-Chama divide is at Cumbres, some fifteen miles westward, and several hundred feet higher. After leaving Toltec, the brink of the cliff is skirted for some time, and many grand and exciting views are presented; but the stream is broken into cascades, and rapidly rises to the plane of the track. Passing a number of snow-sheds, the train is soon twisting around shallow side ravines, and at last, after making a great circle of nearly a mile, there comes a stoppage of that dragging sensation which the wheels impart on an upward grade, and the cars halt on the little level space at the summit. From Antonito to Cumbres the maximum ascent to the mile is only seventy-five feet, while on the western slope the descent per mile reaches two hundred and eleven feet. This intrepid railway crosses the main ranges of the Rocky Mountains over seven or eight distinct passes; and in every instance the locating engineers have followed one water-course upward to its head, and another downward to the valley, finding invariably the sources of these oppositely-flowing brooks to be in springs only a few feet or rods apart at the top. In the present case so slight is the separation that we seem to stop beside the Los Pinos, and to start beside Wolf Creek. Although at an altitude of about 9,500 feet, the neat station buildings at Cumbres are located in a depressed indentation, whence the surrounding hills shut off all outlook.

Our train is scarcely in motion again, however, ere a deep gully opens at our feet, and we commence to crawl cautiously around the protruding face of Cumbres Mountain, with its curiously-piled top of red and gray sandstone, and its precipitous front, in which is hewn midway a shelf for the track. Beyond this we pass a great curve, and then overlook a beautiful valley, which leads down into the broad basin through which the Rio Chama pursues its way southeasterly to its junction with the Rio Grande at Chamita. The view here is picturesque, and well worthy the reproduction our artist has seen fit to give it. There are glimpses of far-off, white-edged mesa-lands, with spaces of shadowy cobalt between. The brook sinks deeper, and its grassy banks are full of yellow and purple asters, in brightest bloom, glorifying the whole hillside up to where, a short distance from its bed, begins the solid spruce and aspen forest. Near Lobato, the track crosses from one tawny ridge to another, on a lofty iron bridge, and we note that Wolf Creek is here a lovely stream, with many cozy nooks in which the sportsman may pitch his tent, and are informed that the water is full of trout, while the wooded mountain slopes abound in large and small game. Once down in the valley, the way is through smooth lawns and pleasant groves until Chama is reached, and here we pause to ask questions about sheep.

Our cars were set aside in the very woods, far from the noisy station; a Y runs southward there, the germ perhaps of a railway down the river to Chamita, where it may join the southern line. All about us are the never-silent pines, and the breezes that whisper among their rugged branches blow laden with balsamic odors. Close by is the Rio Chama, hidden between dense and continuous thickets, through which the cattle can tell you of winding and mysterious paths. Everything in the landscape is soft and peaceful. The grass lies green and tender; the rounded clusters of willows, blending with the glowing masses of poplar behind them, bright in their new autumn colors, make no sharp line against the pine copse, nor this against the swelling, gaily-clothed background of the hills above.

Through this utterly wild, yet richly modulated scene, the Madame and I rode off one morning down to Tierra Amarilla, leaving our companions to angle for finny beauties. For miles the two mules trotted gaily with us through alternate groups of gigantic yellow pines and open stretches of grassy upland, where now and then we struck panic into the hearts of a flock of sheep. Then signs of ranch-life began, and some cattle were met; and ten miles from Chama we came upon the thrifty plazita of Los Brazos (the Arms), surrounded by a wide district of farming land. This continued three miles, and centered in a second hamlet, Los Ojos (the Springs), where there were several shops; thence two miles more, across a sage-brush terrace, took us to our destination.