Pueblo of Taos.
By permission of Dr. F. Rolt-Wheeler.
Several of these Indian villages are clustered together in the vicinity of Santa Fé, often on the banks of the Rio Grande. Each has its own customs and makes its own laws. All are centres of interest. Artists flock to them from all parts of the Continent to paint and sketch them. Travellers tramp for miles to see the Indians in their native costumes and conditions. Some make jewels; some make vases, ornaments, idols, and all manner of earthenware goods; some work in silver, while others make blankets and rugs. With hardly an exception they all make an excellent living out of the things they make and sell.
Each of the pueblos has its own feast-days, or "fiestas," when, for a time varying from a day to over a week, the whole population devotes its time to feasting, dancing and games. The religious rites that are performed and the strange customs that prevail at these feasts and dances form in themselves a vast and interesting study.
At Isleta the road again crossed the Rio Grande. This done, it found itself in a dry sandy wilderness, with the Manzano Range running from north to south in the distance. In patches the ground was white with sandhills, and the trail became two straggling white lines, where the wheels of passing vehicles had left their imprint in the soft white sand. These two white ruts were my only guides. All around was desolation. Nothing was to be seen anywhere, save those two thin white lines straggling aimlessly ahead, the sun-scorched desert with its ragged stones and evil, scanty, tenacious vegetation, and on the horizon that fiery stretch of mountain range, whose peaks rose rugged and defiant and glistened with red as if roused to anger by the eternally raging sun. I had never before realized the great depth of feeling that a mountain range is capable of evoking. The Alps are majestic beyond description. They awe the observer to a sense of his own utter insignificance as he gazes upon that glistening majestic sky-line, and feels the overwhelming influence of those mighty mountains upon him. But if it is an overwhelming influence, it is a friendly one—at least I have found it so. Although there is an instinct in me, as in most people, impelling me to guard and protect myself against anything that is tremendous—a relic, I suppose, of prehistoric days—I feel towards the Alps always like a little boy feels towards his "big brother." The same feeling is seen reflected in the "Sierra Madre" (Mother Mountains) of California.
But in New Mexico I have seen huge ranges that one could truthfully call nothing else but "wicked." They seem to gaze and glower with a cruel, terrifying gleam upon the wanderer who defies their hateful solitude. The hours of travel that followed were hours of weary monotony. A brief lapse every thirty miles or so when a tiny Mexican village on the Rio Grande was passed, and once more the two white ruts came into view, the stones and cactus, and again the evil mountains.
Later, the sand turned to rocks. The trail began to climb the mountains, and the sun sank low in the sky. If ever there was a place to starve to death, thought I, it is here. I reflected upon what the consequences would be if I ran out of petrol or had a bad smash.
I didn't run out of petrol and I didn't have a smash. Instead of that, after about eighty miles from Isleta, the trail descended the mountain pass, re-crossed the Rio Grande for the last time, and swerved at right angles, to continue its course westward. Shortly before sunset I arrived at a little Mexican town called Socorro, where both man and machine were rested, while the man that kept the "C'fay" in the plaza got busy with some "eats" for weary me.
After dinner away once again we go. The sun is setting. We must find a resting-place before dark sets in, for in these countries where the air is clear and mountain ranges hem in every horizon the darkness comes quickly and the sinking of the sun below the sky-line means almost the final close of day.