, according to the custom of New Spain, was laid upon the floor.
The nearest approach to a bedstead in this benighted land is a
bench-like bank of mud brick along the wall, in some of the houses.
Chairs and divans are none too plentiful, even in the homes of the
cultured rich, the people in general preferring to recline or to sit
Turk-fashion upon mats or mattresses laid along the floor.

Early in the morning I was informed that an escort was in waiting to
guide me to Santa Fe. The kindness of the commandant in providing me
with numerous articles of civilized comfort induced me to accede
without protest to his politely worded hint that it would be better for
me to leave behind my weapons and ammunition, which he promised to send
on in a few days.

Having given myself singly into the hands of the Spanish, I knew that
diplomacy was now my sole resource, the thought of a resort to force
being sheer madness.

CHAPTER XX

A MESSAGE TO MY LADY

During the journey to Santa Fe, while stopping over at the town of San
Juan, where I was treated with the utmost warmth of hospitality, I was
able to inform myself as to the prosperous condition of the trader Le
Lande, who had married and settled in the vicinity. But my apprehensions
as to my reception by the Governor of this remote province prevented me
from taking as deep an interest either in that rascal or in the strange
customs and appearance of these Mexican people as I should have felt in
easier circumstances.

Unlike Agua Caliente and some of the other small settlements we had
passed, I found Santa Fe a town widely scattered in the outskirts. Many
of the low adobe buildings which made up the bulk of the place stood
each in its tiny patch of field, which, early as was the season, the
people were beginning to cultivate with their rude ploughs and mattocks.
Within these suburbs, however, the houses crowded closer and closer
together, until they were for the most part separated only by streets
that were no less narrow and crooked than dirty. A more striking
difference between this two-century-old settlement and the ones
up-country was the presence of the two huge adobe churches which towered
among the hovels, all the more imposing for the contrast. Their windows,
like those of the better houses, were glazed with sheets of thin,
transparent talc.

I was at once taken past the rectangle of the soldiers' barracks to the
great open court, or plaza, in the midst of the