serving precious documents
containing so much of interest to the student of history and the
antiquarian, enlisted themselves enthusiastically in the good cause,
and have rescued from oblivion the annals of a relatively remote
civilization, which, but for their forethought, would have perished from
the face of the earth as completely as have the written records of that
wonderful region in Central America, whose gigantic ruins alone remain
to tell us of what was a highly cultured order of architecture in past
ages, and of a people whose intelligence was comparable to the style of
the dwellings in which they lived.

The old adobe Palace is in itself a volume whose pages are filled
with pathos and stirring events. It has been the scene and witness of
incidents the recital of which would to us to-day seem incredible. An
old friend, once governor of New Mexico and now dead, thus graphically
spoke of the venerable building:[7]

In it lived and ruled the Spanish captain general, so remote
and inaccessible from the viceroyalty at Mexico that he was
in effect a king, nominally accountable to the viceroy,
but practically beyond his reach and control and wholly
irresponsible to the people. Equally independent for the
same reason were the Mexican governors. Here met all the
provincial, territorial, departmental, and other legislative
bodies that have ever assembled at the capital of New Mexico.
Here have been planned all the Indian wars and measures
for defence against foreign invasion, including, as the
most noteworthy, the Navajo war of 1823, the Texan invasion
of 1842, the American of 1846, and the Confederate of 1862.
Within its walls was imprisoned, in 1809, the American
explorer Zebulon M. Pike, and innumerable state prisoners
before and since; and many a sentence of death has been
pronounced therein and the accused forthwith led away and
shot at the dictum of the man at the Palace. It has been
from time immemorial the government house with all its
branches annexed. It was such on the Fourth of July, 1776,
when the American Congress at Independence Hall in
Philadelphia proclaimed liberty throughout all the land,
not then, but now embracing it. Indeed, this old edifice
has a history. And as the