[91] The San Luis hills, on each side of the Rio Grande near the Rio Culebra.
[92] Rio Costilla, next tributary of the Rio Grande from the E. See Pike, ed. of 1895, p. 494. On reaching lat. 37° N. Fowler passes from Colorado into New Mexico. The principal landmark is Ute peak, isolated in the plain, a little south of the boundary and of Rio Costilla, on the E. bank of the Rio Grande, alt. about 10,000 feet.
[93] Apparently Colorado creek, another tributary of the Rio Grande from the E.
[94] San Cristobal—or the next village below, Los Montes. The “deet guters” of the text are the arroyos which Fowler intended to call deep gutters.
[95] See Lewis and Clark, ed. of 1893, p. 215, for a similar name of ardent spirits, apparently the same word as ratafia. What Fowler procured was aguardiente de Taos, a fiery fluid distilled at San Fernandez from native wheat, and soon too well known as “Taos lightning.”
[96] Baptiste Roy, the interpreter, who had gone on to Santa Fé with Col. Glenn.
[97] San Fernandez de Taos, the Mexican village about 2 m. from the Indian Pueblo de Taos. Gregg states that the first white settler was a Spaniard named Pando, ca. 1745. See Pike, ed. of 1895, p. 598.
[98] Pueblo de Taos, the ancient seat of the Pueblo Indians of Taos, consisting then as now of two casas grandes—great adobe buildings with the streamlet between them. Readers who would like a little local color here will find it well laid on in chaps. xiii-xviii of Garrard’s Wah-to-yah. The youthful author witnessed the executions which followed the battle of Taos in 1847.
[99] Pueblo creek, the northern one of two main forks of Taos creek.
[100] Square brackets in the original MS.