ction of mud huts at the end of
a wretched trail. The Pueblo de San Juan and the squalid,
poverty-stricken village of La Canada followed in turn. Everywhere they
found hatred and ill-disguised fear of the Texans roaming beyond the
Canadian. Next they reached the Pueblo de Ohuqui and here found snug
accommodations for themselves and their animals in the little valley.
From the pueblo the trail lay through an arroyo over another mountain
and they camped part way down its southeast face with Santa Fe sprawled
out below them.

Morning found them going down the sloping trail, the Indian escort
surreptitiously examining their rifles, and in the evening they entered
the collection of mud houses honored by the name of San Francisco de la
Santa Fe, whose population of about three thousand souls was reputed to
be the poorest in worldly wealth in the entire province of New Mexico;
and, judging from the numbers of openly run gambling houses, rum shops
and worse, the town might have deserved the reputation of being the
poorest in morals and spiritual wealth.

Sprawled out under the side of the mountain, its mud houses of a single
story, its barracks, _calabozo_ and even the "palace" of the governor
made of mud, with scarcely a pane of glass in the whole town; its narrow
streets littered with garbage and rubbish; with more than two-thirds of
its population barefooted and unkempt, a mixture of Spaniards and
Indians for generations, in which blending the baser parts of their
natures seemed singularly fitted to survive; with cringing, starving
dogs everywhere; full of beggars, filthy and in most cases disgustingly
diseased, with hands outstretched for alms, as ready to curse the tight
of purse as to bless the generous, and both to no avail; with its
domineering soldiery without a pair of shoes between them, its arrogant
officers in shiny, nondescript uniforms and tarnished gilt, with huge
swords and massive spurs, to lead the unshod mob of privates into
cowardly retreat or leave them to be slaughtered by their Indian foes,
whose lances and bows were superior in accuracy and execution to the
ancient firelocks so often lacking in necessary parts; reputed to be
founded on the ruins of a pueblo which had flourished centuries before
the later "city" and no doubt was its superior in everything but
shameless immorality. There, under Sante Fe mountain and the pure and
almost cloudless blue sky, along the little mountain stream of the same
nam