Her alliance with the American Republic is what one might call a marriage of arrangement. Foreign in race, in sentiment, in understanding, she has never adopted the customs or manners of her new lord, but lives tranquilly, uneventfully, dreaming always of the long ago.
And even though Don Diego de Vargas has lain for two centuries in the grave of his forefathers, though Indians no longer go on the warpath, though the eight-horse wagon mile-long caravans of the traders and travelers from the far East beyond the Mississippi no longer come clattering down over the mountains, to the excited and welcoming shouts of the populace of, “Los Americanos! La Caravana!” crowding into the Plaza to receive them, if the streets of Santa Fé no longer riot in tumult and bloodshed, they at least still riot in color and picturesqueness, kaleidoscopic enough to vie with anything in Constantinople or Cairo. You might think yourself in the Orient or in a city of old Spain transported upon a magic carpet, but nothing less like the United States can be imagined. Along the narrow crooked streets, dwellings hundreds of years old stand shoulder to shoulder with modern houses that have wedged themselves between. Down a zigzag lane you may see an Indian woman hooded in a white cotton shawl, and balancing a jar of water on her head as in the Biblical pictures of Rebecca.
Besides big modern automobiles are Indians leading little burros so loaded down with firewood that their meek little faces are all there is to be seen protruding in front, little switching tails or kicking heels in the back, and the whole bundle supported by spindly tiny-footed legs. On a corner is an Indian wrapped in his bright blanket. Two Mexicans in high-crowned wide-brimmed sombreros lean against a door frame and smoke cigarettes. Cowboys in flannel shirts have vivid bandannas around their throats, and there is more color yet in women’s dresses, in flowers, in fruits, in awnings—color, color rioting everywhere. Over everything the sun bakes just as it does in Spain or Northern Africa, and the people all look as silent and dreamy as the town.
Only a few hundred miles away are typical striving American cities shouting to anyone who will hear, and assailing the ears of those who won’t, “Watch me grow—just watch me!” The big ones boom it, the little ones pipe it, but each and every one shouts to the earth at large, “Yesterday I was a community of nesters’ shanties; today I’m an up-to-date thriving town. Tomorrow—wait, and you shall see!”
Yet their little Indian and Spanish sister in the center of a vast domain of buried cities, of unmined treasures, dozes in the sun and cares not a bit how much the world outside may strive, or teem or grow. Can anyone fancy her waking from her reverie, dropping her indolent soft Spanish accent and shouting in strident tones, that she, too, will be a bustling growing town? Sooner fancy the Sphinx on the African desert urging, “Votes for women!”
CHAPTER XXI
IGNORANCE WITH A CAPITAL I
Imagine people living all their lives in Cairo never having seen the Pyramids. Imagine anyone living in Italy never having been to Pompeii. Yet we, ourselves, to whom the antiquities and wonders of far countries are perfectly familiar, did not even know that the wonders of our Southwest existed! We thought that Pueblo had a nice Indian sound, that Santa Fé must be an important railroad terminal. Arizona we pictured as a wide desert like the Sahara, with the Grand Canyon at the top of it, and a place called Phoenix, appropriately named as the only thing that could survive the heat, and another place called Tombstone, also fittingly named, in the middle of a vast area of sizzling sand.
Was there ever any place less like a railroad center than Santa Fé? The main line of the railroad which has taken its name does not even go there. A little branch runs to the terminal city from a junction called Lamy, where, by the way, there is a Harvey hotel, which means, of course, a good one. This is a word of advice to the tourist who finds the one in Santa Fé poor. Still, in a city that is old and colorful, and quaint, one hardly expects wonderful accommodations. The hotel in Biskra, Africa, did not use to be much to boast about, either.
As for our ignorance about the country, we came across a woman today who was certainly, at least to us, a new type. She was traveling on mule-back and absolutely alone! At first it seemed the most daring and dangerous thing I had ever heard of, but a few minutes of her conversation convinced me that she was quite safe. Never did I believe a human being could so closely resemble a hornet. She looked us over as though we might have been figures in the Eden Musée. Then she asserted: