Upward we climb, amid thickly-wooded mountain tops, round thrilling bends and tortuous precipices and over the rockiest of roads. The end is in sight. A depression in the sky-line ahead shows where the Raton Pass (7,620 feet to be exact) reaches its highest point and gazes forwards into the heart of New Mexico and behind into the vastnesses of Colorado.
A gradual bend, a sudden swerve, and then—the summit is reached. Colorado is passed. Before us lies a great and thickly-wooded valley, broad and deep and beautiful. Beyond lie the great plains of New Mexico, plains so vast that in their utter defiance of limit and dimension they beggar description. The eye could not follow the great expanse. So immense were the distances that the earth merged indefinitely into the sky at the horizon. Dotted and strewn here and there were hills and mountain ranges that seemed to have sprung up so suddenly out of the plateau to have really no connection with them.
Here I stood at the gate of another world. Before me lay a land of mystery and romance, a land of health for body and soul; a land of desert and sage-bush, of cactus and strange vegetation; a land of antiquity unparalleled by any other in the world. Here at my feet lay New Mexico and beyond, Arizona, the two States that at the same time are the oldest and the youngest in America. Although only admitted to the Union in 1912, their history dates from remote ages when they were peopled by a race unknown to-day but nevertheless well advanced on the road to civilization, a race that built cities while Babylon was as yet unknown, and laid down irrigation systems that puzzle the engineers of the present day.
Arizona and New Mexico, you are the pearls of great price that no human being has ever yet valued at your true worth. When the day shall come that man can say of you, "I have seen you in all your moods and have discovered all your secrets," then this old earth will be a lifeless, soulless, aimless globe, its purpose fulfilled, its course completed.
A five mile descent through the scented pine-trees brought me to Raton, another half-Mexican, half-American town, small but modern and well-arranged. "No more 'rooming-houses' for me," I resolved and turned my gaze to the far-distant plains where the darkness was slowly gathering.
Even in New Mexico, one need never go without a meal. The way to an Englishman's heart is through his stomach (this applies also to Americans and most human beings in general!). My heart was greatly touched by Raton in this manner, and shortly before dusk I was speeding on my way southwards towards Santa Fé.
Ten miles out the trail crossed a river. It must have been the Canadian River, a tributary of the Arkansas, which it joins several hundred miles to the east. The surrounding country was desolation and solitude itself. Half prairie, half waste, almost desert, it was a country of new sensations. Just to the west, from horizon to horizon, stretched the gaunt and rugged Sangre de Cristo range, dark and threatening always in their aspect. Not a living thing was in sight, not even a suggestion of life. I ran Lizzie off the road to the brink of the river and laid down my bed in the silver rays of the rising moon.
At 6.30 in the morning the sky was ruddy and the air pure with the fresh breezes of the dawn. From minute to minute the myriad colours of the mountains changed their tints as the sun rose higher in the Mexican sky. I continued on my way.
The road was broad and good, but a surprise was in store. After a few miles there appeared a dilapidated signpost where a bedraggled pathway joined the broad highway through a gap in the fence which now ran alongside. It bore the legend "To Santa Fé" and pointed through the fence to the left. My first impression was that some small boy had been playing pranks. It was inconceivable that these two ruts but a few inches wide in the coarse green grass should lead to Santa Fé while there, straight on, was a good broad highroad that led nowhere. It ran clear ahead and was lost over the brow of a hill. I never found where that road went. I have never seen it on any map and have made many inquiries since. Some travellers, like myself, had seen that road and wavered, but not one had gone that way and could enlighten me.
New Mexico is not a nice country in which to lose oneself. Towns are very few, and often one can go a hundred miles without seeing a village or meeting a soul. So in spite of the temptation I swerved to the left and entered the field that was without corn or pasture, following those two ruts that cut deep into the prairie soil and were not visible more than 50 or 100 yards ahead at the most. In places the two ruts had become too deep for further use and another pair had been started at the side, running parallel with the original ones. When these had worn too far another pair had sprung up, and in many places I counted eight distinct pairs of ruts running side by side across the prairie, each representing a distinct phase in the evolution of the Santa Fé Trail. At any point, if one looks far and long enough, one can find the original tracks that centuries ago were formed by the old prairie-schooners as they journeyed westward across the plains to Santa Fé.