"I will try to do so."
CHAPTER X.
THE LARCH-TREE HACIENDA.
Though the report made by Quoniam was in every respect true, the Negro was ignorant of certain details of which we will now inform the reader, because these events are closely connected with our story, and clearness renders it indispensable that they should be made known. We will, therefore, return to the Larch-tree hacienda.
But, in the first place, let us explain the meaning of this word "hacienda," which we have employed several times in the course of this narrative, and which several authors have employed before us, without understanding its significance.
In Sonora, Texas, and all the old Spanish colonies generally, where the land is, as it were, left to anyone who likes to take possession of it and cultivate it, there may be found at immense distances, and broadcast like almost imperceptible dots over the waste lands, vast agricultural establishments, each as large as one of our counties. These establishments are called haciendas, a word we improperly translate by farm, which has not at all the same meaning.
Immediately after the conquest, the Cortez, Pizarros, Almagros, and other leaders of adventurers hastened to repay their comrades by dividing among them the lands of the conquered, following, perhaps without suspecting it, the example which had been given them a few centuries previously by the leaders of the Barbarians, after the break-up and dismemberment of the Roman Empire.
The conquerors were few in number, the shares were large; and the majority of these ragged conquerors, who in their own country had not even a roof to shelter their heads, found themselves all at once masters of immense domains, which they immediately set to work turning to account, laying down the sword without regret to take the pick, that is to say, compelling the Indians who had become their slaves to clear for them the land they had stolen.
The first care of the new possessors of the soil was to erect, in positions easy to defend, houses, whose lofty, thick, and embattled walls rendered them thorough fortresses, behind which they could easily defy any attempted revolt on the part of their slaves. The inhabitants had been allotted like the ground; each Spanish soldier received a considerable number as his share; arms cost nothing. There was no lack of stone, and hence the buildings were constructed of vast proportions, and of such extreme strength, that even at the present day, after the lapse of several centuries, these haciendas are an object of admiration to the traveller.