In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

Epiphany brought me my horse and we set off. To Cibola from San Rafael is somewhat over eighty miles, through the Zunyi mountains and the Mormon village of Ramah, getting on to what used to be a great but desolate highway in Spanish times from the South to the North.

The trail climbed upward from the warmer lower levels of the lava beds and wound into the mazes of great rock débris, up to banks of unmelted snow and long snow trails where spruce and pinyon blurted from the rocks. We reached wide, untrammeled fields of snow and entered a snowstorm which enveloped us in white veils. Epiphany took a blanket from under his horse and tied it about his shoulders, and I put on my gloves and turned up my collar. We cantered the horses through the snow, even galloped. For the snow made the Spaniard uneasy, and he urged speed. His horse Diamond did not look as if he would last out, but his master had no doubts, and though he plunged and stumbled and got into holes Epiphany merely swore at him, pulled him up, and urged him on the faster.

When the snowstorm lifted Epiphany seemed to be more at ease, but he had broken one of his stirrups and that forced him to a steady trot. We rode across to a deserted cabin, and he sought some wire to mend the stirrup whilst I opened a can of tongue and cut up a rough lunch. Epiphany then admitted he had never been to Ramah before in his life, though he had heard that it was Mormon and you could have more than one wife. This tickled his mind a good deal and he said: "I'll write to my girl when we get there to come and be my first wife." And while he spoke he arduously wound alfalfa wire about the wooden foot-cage of his stirrup.

"We must go much faster now," he cried. For the Mexican who is so slow over everything else is very impatient on horseback. Epiphany cantered uphill or downhill and over stones and holes in a mad style, not merely for a hundred yards or so but over leagues.

We emerged on to a magnificent, snow-covered plateau and plunged gayly across it, not guessing that there were twenty miles of it and that it was not to be conquered in an hour. Over all the white prairie the tops of withered stems poked through the snow, and you knew the trail by the absence of the stems and a shadow, a vague indentation. Rosy mesas called to the woods and to us from a far horizon, and slowly as we rode there came into view what looked like a great white castle or cathedral fully ten miles away but glittering in late sunlight. I felt I could not be mistaken; this must be the famous "Mesa Escrita" or Inscription Rock, as the Americans call it, whereon Spanish explorers and travelers have written their names even from the time of Onate.

As it stands hard by the road to Ramah we made for it and rode for nearly two hours toward it before it seemed to grow near us. But by then the snow clouds had returned. Eager airs swept the plateau with earfuls of snow and wisps of blown drift. Evening dusk was closing rapidly in, and it looked as if we should be out in the storm all night when we espied a Mexican rancher coming towards us on his horse. This was Caromillo, returning from Ramah to his cabin with a sack of flour, and he advised us to spend the night with him.

So we rode back to a tiny adobe hut whose door was bolted from within. And the little old man let himself in at a window and then undid the bolt. It was like an icehouse inside, but we readily unsaddled our horses and led them into the corral and then lit a fire in the hut and put on pots to boil. It then rapidly grew hot, and we stretched ourselves on the clay floor, drank coffee, munched bread and cheese and fried salmon from a tin.

Night had come down outside and hid the great rock which we were so near, and when I went out to look at the horses a three-ways blowing snow tempest made whirls of snow dust in the air. Curiously enough, the moon was shining behind the storm and lit up the snow-swept little cabin and barn with a dim turnip-lantern light.

There was not much comfort in Caromillo's house; we slept on the clay floor, but even it could impart a feeling of home in the midst of such a storm. But the Mexicans were strange men to be quartered with. Epiphany, who had torn his shirt riding through the thorns, took that garment off with some idea of mending it, and his bare back was all scarred with the marks of his Penitente creed. Flippant and cynical in his conversation, light-hearted certainly, and yet he was bound in the ascetic traditions and gloomy piety of his people. I would not ask him about his religion, yet I wondered if he ever would be "crucified" and hang on a Penitente cross till he fainted, as so many of them do.

Next morning there was a silver dawn. The Mesa Escrita was all encrusted and hanging with snow. It had taken on an aspect of the fantastic and hardly belonged to this world. And as we rode towards it, because of the mists it grew further away. I saw it as it were removed into the past, with wanderers remaining there from a bygone age. I would have liked to write my name also on the great rock—I came and I passed. But being on our horses we did not stay. We left our footprints in the snow. The snow was deep; the silence was utter. Even our horses made not the slightest sound as they padded over the trackless waste of snow. Snow-veils hurried across the mesas—snow descended upon us and hid all from view. Thus it was that on Thanksgiving morning we got lost and neither of us could say which was the way.