which is one of the
most interesting in the world, by reason of the infinite labor and
patience which built it. The last attempt at a Pueblo uprising was in
1728; but Acoma was not implicated in it at all.

The strange stone stairway by which Fray Juan Ramirez climbed first to
his dangerous parish in the teeth of a storm of arrows, is used by the
people of Acoma to this day, and is still called by them _el camino del
padre_ (the path of the Father).

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Fireplaces.

V.

THE SOLDIER POET.

But now to go back a little. The young officer who made that superb leap
across the chasm at Acoma, pushed back the bridge-log, and so saved the
lives of his comrades, and indirectly of all the Spanish in New Mexico,
was Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagran.[15] He was highly educated, being
a graduate of a Spanish university; young, ambitious, fearless, and
athletic; a hero among the heroes of the New World, and a chronicler to
whom we are greatly indebted. The six extant copies of the fat little
parchment-bound book of his historical poem, in thirty-four heroic
cantos, are each worth many times their weight in gold. It is a great
pity that we could not have had a Villagran for each of the campaigns of
the pioneers of America, to tell us more of the details of those
superhuman dangers and hardships,--for most of the chroniclers of that
day treat such episodes as briefly as we would a trip from New York to
Brooklyn.

The leaping of the chasm was not Captain Villagran's only connection
with the bloody doings at Acoma in the winter of 1598-99. He came very
near being a victim of the first massacre, in which Juan de Zaldivar and
his men perished, and escaped that fate only to suffer hardships as
fearful as death.

In the fall of 1598 four soldiers deserted Onate's little army at San
Gabriel; and the governor sent Villagran, with three or four soldiers,
to arrest them. It is hard to say what a sheriff nowadays would think if
called upon to follow four desperadoes nearly a thousand miles across
such a desert, and with a _posse_ so small. But Captain Villagran kept
the trail of the deserters; and after a pursuit of at least nine hundred
miles, overtook them in southern Chihuahua, Mexico. The deserters made a
fierce resistance. Two were killed by the officers, and two escaped.
Villagran left his little _posse_ there, and retraced his dangerous nine
hundred miles alone. Arriving at the pueblo of Puaray, on the wes