Rio Abajo.

CHAPTER TEN.

THE DEL NORTE.

For days we journey down the Del Norte. We pass through numerous
villages, many of them types of Santa Fe. We cross the zequias and
irrigating canals, and pass along fields of bright green maize plants.
We see vineyards and grand haciendas. These appear richer and more
prosperous as we approach the southern part of the province, the Rio
Abajo.

In the distance, both east and west, we descry dark mountains rolled up
against the sky. These are the twin ranges of the Rocky Mountains.
Long spurs trend towards the river, and in places appear to close up the
valley. They add to the expression of many a beautiful landscape that
opens before us as we move onward.

We see picturesque costumes in the villages and along the highways: men
dressed in the chequered serape or the striped blankets of the Navajoes;
conical sombreros with broad brims; calzoneros of velveteen, with their
rows of shining "castletops" and fastened at the waist by the jaunty
sash. We see mangas and tilmas, and men wearing the sandal, as in
Eastern lands. On the women we observe the graceful rebozo, the short
nagua, and the embroidered chemisette.

We see rude implements of husbandry: the creaking carreta, with its
block wheels; the primitive plough of the forking tree-branch, scarcely
scoring the soil; the horn-yoked oxen; the goad; the clumsy hoe in the
hands of the peon serf: these are all objects that are new and curious
to our eyes, and that indicate the lowest order of agricultural
knowledge.

Along the roads we meet numerous atajos, in charge of their arrieros.
We observe the mules, small, smooth, light-limbed, and vicious. We
glance at the heavy alparejas and bright worsted apishamores. We notice
the tight wiry mustangs, ridden by the arrieros; the high-peaked saddles
and hair bridles; the swarth faces and pointed beards of the riders; the
huge spurs that tinkle at every step; the exclamations, "Hola, mula!
malraya! vaya!" We notice all these, and they tell us we are journeying
in the land of the Hispano-American.

Under other circumstances these objects would have interested me. At
that time, they appeared to me like the pictures of a panorama, or the
changing scenes of a continuous dream. As such have they left their
impressions on my memory. I was under the incipient delirium of fever.

It was as yet only incipient; nevertheless, it distorted the images
around me, and rendered t