nts of my prairie
life, nor tell by what chances I escaped death in some of its most
appalling forms. The "Choctaw," the jaguar, the spotted leopard of the
jungle, the cayman of the sand lakes, had each in turn marked me for its
prey, and yet, preserved from every peril, I succeeded in reaching the
little village of "La Noria," or the "Well," which occupies one of the
opening gorges of the Rocky Mountains, at the outskirts of which some
of the inhabitants found me asleep, with clothing reduced to very rags,
nothing remaining of all my equipment save my rifle and a little canvas
pouch of ammunition.

My entertainers were miners, whose extreme poverty and privation would
have been inexplicable, had I not learned that the settlement was formed
exclusively of convicts, who had either been pardoned during the term of
their sentence, or, having completed their time, preferred passing
the remainder of their lives in exile. As a "billet of conduct" was
necessary to all who settled at the village, the inhabitants, with a
very few exceptions, were peaceable, quiet, and inoffensive; and of
the less well disposed, a rigidly severe police took the most effective
charge.

Had there been any way of disposing of me, I should not have been
suffered to remain; but as there was no "parish" to which they could
"send me on," nor any distinct fund upon which to charge me, I was
retained in a spirit of rude compassion, for which, had it even been
ruder, I had been grateful. The "Gobernador" of the settlement was an
old Mexican officer of Santa Anna's staff called Salezar, and whose
"promotion" was a kind of penalty imposed upon him for his robberies
and extortions in the commissariat of the army. He was not altogether
unworthy of the trust, since it was asserted that there never was a
convict vice nor iniquity in which he was not thoroughly versed, nor
could any scheme be hatched, the clew to which his dark ingenuity could
not discover.

[Illustration: 414-69]

I was summoned before him on the day of my arrival, and certainly a
greater contrast could not have been desired than was the bravery of his
costume to the rags of mine. A Spanish hat and feathers, such as is only
seen upon the stage, surmounted his great red and carbuncled face; a
pair of fiery red moustaches, twisted into two complete circles, with a
tail out of them like an eccentric "Q;" a sky-blue jacket covered with
silver buttons; tight pantaloons of the same color; and Hes