“Si, Señor,” came the husky answer, whereupon the burro was seized by the tail and brought very willingly to anchor. Slipping several of the sticks out of their leather-loops, half a dozen long yellow specimens, something between a melon and a cantaloupe, were held up for our inspection. We hammered them with our knuckles, testing their soundness, and finding some to suit, enquired the cost,—
“Cuanto pide vm. por estos melones?”
“Dos realles!” (two shillings) was the reply; so we bought three at an outlay of seventy-five cents.
They proved muskmelonish and somewhat tough, but by no means bad. There seems to be no reason why much better melons should not be raised, since the conditions are favorable and every farmer does more or less at it. This question why served to spice our chat at luncheon. It was ultimately concluded that the continued degeneracy was due to the fact that all the good ones were stolen and eaten, only the very poorest being left to mature their seeds; thus the worst, instead of the best, were used to propagate from. I recite this, to show the thoughtful reader that we are not always frivolous, but often introduce grave themes into our discourse, and discuss them in a philosophic way.
Attaching ourselves to the locomotive of a working train, after the noon repast, we were hauled down the valley three miles, and given an opportunity to watch the men repair track that had been lately torn to pieces by water, two or three culverts having been swept out and the road-bed completely uprooted. The hills at that point slanted down to the river in a long treeless sweep, sown so thickly with boulders of basalt, from the size of a bushel to that of a barrel, that even the sagebrush could find scanty footing between. Down this long slope, from the mountains behind, had come one of those raging precipitations of unmeasured rain to which the West has given the expressive name “cloudburst.” Truly, when one of these incidents of Rocky Mountain meteorology occurs, “the windows of heaven are opened.” To such a torrent the natural rip-rap opposed a very slight obstacle. The heavy and closely packed rocks were lifted and rolled and hurled headlong as though they had been a child’s marbles. Wherever any earth or mere gravel was met, it was plowed up and dashed away in a moment, while as for the railway bed, its embankments were demolished, its cuttings filled, and such heaps of stones piled upon its distorted track in some places that no attempt was made to dig it out, but new rails were laid in a different spot. They were rough and irregular enough, but we went safely over. Against these cloudbursts no railway in this region can provide; and there is nothing to be done but rebuild as quickly as possible. The skill, energy and marvelous speed with which the section men do this, and the character of the temporary track over which they run their trains until a better one can be constructed, excite the surprise of every one. Railroading in the West is as unlike the similar pursuit in the Atlantic States as a Colorado silver shaft is a contrast to a commonplace granite quarry.
NEW MEXICAN LIFE.
We had observed on the further side of the river, where the flat lands were continually widening between the stream and the hills, signs of Mexican habitancy, and at the washout discovered a chapel of the Society of the Penitentes, into which the flood had broken a great gap near the foundation. It was a rude little house of mud, but well plastered within, and perhaps had been intended as a dwelling in former days. Creeping in through the breach, we found no furniture, but a pile of a dozen or more wooden crosses, which had been carried there by the doers of penance at Easter. The smallest of these crosses was more than ten feet in height, and its beams at least six inches in diameter. As to the heaviest, I doubt if I could have lifted it fairly from the ground. Yet the poor sinners had managed to get them across their shoulders, and so had dragged them hither, with many pains of outward penance and fearful flagellations of conscience, but with rich reward of pride before earthly eyes, and promises of glory in the world to come. From where they had been brought, or by whom, there was no record; but their ends were worn diagonally to a sharp wedge by long scraping over the stony soil. In addition to these were several small crosses of lath, which had been borne by the priests, typically; some tin and wooden candle holders, curious little lanterns, and one of those rude religious portraits on woods, which are so common throughout this section, and which are preserved reverently among the Mexicans for generations.
The Penitentes are a sect within the Church, which the priests are said to have been discouraging. Perhaps this has had some effect, for the custom is in decay, a result due more to the railway than to the cathedral, I fancy. During the greater part of the year the Penitentes sin and are sinned against like other people, but in the spring they atone for it by wearing coarse clothes under a sort of sacrificial robe, and by torturing and starving themselves nearly to death. Walking in processions, masked beyond recognition, enduring constant castigations from each other, bearing over the roughest roads and across country the heavy crosses we have seen, and with the “pride that apes humility” enduring the utmost suffering, they consider themselves to have laid in a stock of grace sufficient to over-balance all possible crime during the coming twelvemonth. The practice has a long history, but amounts to an American survival of the Flagellants of Europe.