That evening we sat in the parlor-car, or rather lay easily on the couch-like chairs reclined to their utmost limit, and listened to the Musician’s violin, while the glorious banners of the retreating day paled slowly from view. Opera, sonata, opera-bouffe, ballad, came tenderly to our ears and floated away out over the sun-flowers and into the piñons, where the few birds awoke to listen; and perhaps were wafted out to the rolling plain, whence at intervals came faintly in reply the long, yelping howl of a coyote.
In the morning we were awakened with the announcement that our conveyance was ready. It had come at midnight, and proved to be only an ordinary farm-wagon, with springs under the seats. The road wound through the clustered trees and crossed open glades, as though in a nobleman’s park; passed the rocky buttes, whose jutting cliffs were strangely picturesque in their Grecian morning-robe of angular shadows, and descended a long, stony hill to the mesa, which thereafter it traversed for ten miles. This mesa was a great table-land of sand. Whence it had drifted was widely discussed; but the more I think about it, the less I believe it had drifted at all, and the more I incline to the opinion that it remained, while a great amount of formerly overlying earth and partial rock, unprotected by the thick capping of lava shielding the larger part of the surface, had been swept away by water. There were plenty of gauges to help to a judgment upon the extent of this denudation. To the right, a long mesa, with steep sides, extended out like a promontory, whose level basaltic surface was a thousand feet above us; yet that was a valley long ago, for the lava took it as a channel. Behind, across the Chama, the Jemez mountains lifted themselves in rugged outline against the southern sky. They are volcanic; but, almost as high as they, towered the flat-topped, butte-like mountain of Abiquiu, which is not volcanic, but of sandstone, and stands as a mark of the former level of the country there, on the day when the hot basalt came hissing down from its fiery spout now lost to our tracing. On this dry, sandy, cactus-loving upland grew the rich grama-grass, another name for it being panic-grass. It has a seed-head which is neither panicle nor spike, but a perfect little one-sided brown feather, about an inch long, hanging stiffly at right angles to the stalk, and at its very summit. It is not only odd, but very beautiful, for the grass grows thinly, and every plumelet is visible.
Our progress was slow and monotonous; we had exhausted our conversation and were getting tired of everything, when the driver pointed out a red hill to the right as our destination, and presently, descending a steep bench, we turned up the valley of Ojo Caliente, whose former banks, like those of all these southern streams, were from one to five miles apart, and very precipitous. Between these the river wound its way, crossing from side to side of the valley, or pursuing the safe “middle course.” In the bends of the stream were Mexican farms and the most dilapidated of adobe houses, some part of nearly every one of which had so fallen to pieces as to be uninhabitable. Our guide said the land was poor, and we believed him. Everything showed that the people were poverty-stricken and almost in barbarism, yet they had an abundance of land, pretty well watered, and great flocks of sheep and goats; we met a single flock which probably contained fifteen hundred sheep. Some of the dwellings had wooden gratings in place of windows; and the doors, made with auger and axe, had been rudely carved in an attempt at decoration, which time, smoothing and tinting, had rendered very attractive to our unaccustomed and curious eyes. Behind the best houses often would lie an unfenced bit of old orchard, grown almost wild. Such a half-ruined plazita, with its carved doors and grated windows; with its corner of goat-corral, and conical ovens at the side; its grassy roof, and high, gnarled trees overhead; its background of river-bend and cornfield and red rocks and distant misty mountains most of all, with its foreign humanity peering out to see who was passing, made a picture which threw our art-devotees into ecstacy; and as each was passed they declared they would sketch it—when they came back! That the declaration was kept you have evidence, though modified into a general view of Ojo Caliente.
Four miles up from the bend the springs were reached, and we gladly sat down to a dinner beginning with Baltimore oysters. These springs are hot, but endurably so, after one has tempered up to it. They flow from under the cliff on the eastern bank, and are thence led into the bath-houses close by. Excepting the hotel, which will accommodate from fifty to seventy-five guests, the only other building is a large supply-store; but you will usually find a great many people living in tents near by. These warm springs are noted for their curative and healing qualities, and have been visited for many years by invalids, with miraculous results. They do tell some wonderful stories of relief given to rheumatic and paralytic patients; while diseases of the skin vamos at once, as a Mexican attendant phrased it. Such an effect is to be expected, when you find heated water analyzing into the following constituency:
| Sodium Carbonate | 196.95 |
| Lithium ” | .21 |
| Calcium ” | 4.17 |
| Magnesium ” | 2.18 |
| Iron ” | 10.12 |
| Potassium Sulphate | 5.17 |
| Sodium Chloride | 38.03 |
| Silicic Acid | 2.10 |
| Total | 272.52 |
The fact that the latitude (36° 20´) and inland situation give a mild, equable climate in winter, and the altitude (6,000 feet) makes the summer air sweet and invigorating, should be taken into account, however, in estimating the conditions that promote the speedy gains of health recorded.
OJO CALIENTE.
That these springs have been resorted to from remote antiquity, is shown by the ledges above, which are covered with very ancient, almost obliterated, ruins of those cliff dwelling aborigines whose houses and pueblos are scattered in such profusion over the cañons tributary to the Rio Colorado and the lower Rio San Juan. We heard that many skeletons and relics had been found there by casual excavating, and so went up to try our luck. We could trace not only the bounds of several closely grouped pueblos, but in many cases even the estufas and the straight walls of the separate rooms. A little shoveling at once showed us that these were made outwardly of uncut stone, and inwardly of adobe, which resisted the pick, while the loose earth within was easily removed. We could only “coyote round,” as a western man calls desultory digging, but saw how rich a treasure to the archæologist would be exposed by systematic excavations. In searching for the stone metates and las manas, which then as now constituted the corn-crushing apparatus of the common people, the Mexican peasants have disclosed many ancestral bones, and we kicked about parts of human skeletons lying bleached, on the surface, at half a dozen places. At last, by chance, we struck a skeleton ourselves. It was that of a young person, for the wisdom teeth had not yet risen above their bone sockets, and the sutures of the skull were open. The bones were disordered, so that we obtained only a few, and the head had been crushed in. The same rude dismemberment and lack of burial is said to characterize all the skeletons discovered, and they are always found within the walls of the houses. The local theory is, that an earthquake overtook the town; but I believe that the pueblo was attacked and captured by enemies during the wars which we know finally resulted in the village-people being driven out of all this region, and that it was burned over the heads of the citizens, many of whom were killed within their very homes. The presence of charcoal all through the mounds of ruins, with various other circumstances, confirms this reasonable explanation.