of the
Indians were seized and court-martialed on the spot. De Vargas planted
his flag on the Plaza, erected a cross and thanked God.

[Illustration: A view of part of San Ildefonso, New Mexico, showing the
famous Black Mesa in the background]

One of the hardest fights of '94 was out on the Black Mesa, a huge
precipitous square of basalt, frowning above San Ildefonso. This mesa
was a famous prayer shrine to the Indians and is venerated as sacred to
this day. All sides are sheer but that towards the river. Down this is a
narrow trail like a goat path between rocks that could be hurled on
climbers' heads. De Vargas stormed the Black Mesa, on top of which great
numbers of rebels had taken refuge. Four days the attack lasted, his 100
soldiers repeatedly reaching the edge of the summit only to be hurled
down. After ten days the siege had to be abandoned, but famine had done
its work among the Indians. For five years, the old general slept in his
boots and scarcely left the warpath. It was at the siege of the Black
Mesa that he is said to have made the vow to build a chapel to the
Virgin; and it is his siege of Santa Fe that the yearly De Vargas
Celebration commemorates to this day. And in the end, he died in his
boots on the march at Bernalillo, leaving in his will explicit
directions that he should be buried in the church of Santa Fe "under the
high altar beneath the place where the priest puts his feet when he says
mass." The body was carried to the parish church in his bed of state and
interred beneath the altar; and the De Vargas celebration remains to
this day one of the quaintest ceremonies of the old Governor's Palace.

CHAPTER XI

TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND AND ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE SOUTHWEST

As Quebec is the shrine of historical pilgrims in the North, and Salem
in New England; so Taos is the Mecca of students of history and lovers
of art in the Southwest. Here came the Spanish knights mounted and in
armor plate half a century before the landing of the Pilgrims on
Plymouth Rock. They had not only crossed the sea but had traversed the
desert from Old Mexico for 900 miles over burning sands, amid wild, bare
mountains, across rivers where horses and riders swamped in the
quicksands. To Taos came Franciscan _padres_ long before Champlain had
built stockades at Port Royal or Quebec. Just as the Jesuits won the
wilderness of the up-country by martyr blood, so the Franciscans
attacked the strongholds of pagani