e
been safe, for a bold deed always commands admiration from the savage,
and at that time they would have scorned to use their arrows.

Such was the fate of Colonel Overton!

CHAPTER XIII.

At last we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to
Santa Fe. Much hath been written about this rich and romantic city,
where formerly, if we were to believe travellers, dollars and doubloons
were to be had merely for picking them up; but I suspect the writers had
never seen the place, for it is a miserable, dirty little hole,
containing about three thousand souls, almost all of them half-bred,
naked, and starved. Such is Santa Fe. You will there witness spectacles
of wretchedness and vice hardly to be found elsewhere--harsh despotism;
immorality carried to its highest degree, with drunkenness and filth.

The value of the Santa Fe trade has been very much exaggerated. This
town was formerly the readiest point to which goods could be brought
overland from the States to Mexico; but since the colonization of Texas
it is otherwise. The profits also obtained in this trade are far from
being what they used to be. The journey from St. Louis (Missouri) is
very tedious, the distance being about twelve hundred miles, nor is the
journey ended when you reach Santa Fe, as they have to continue to
Chihuahua. Goods come into the country at a slight duty, compared to
that payable on the coast, five hundred dollars only (whatever may be
the contents), being charged upon each waggon; and it is this privilege
which supports the trade. But the real market commences at Chihuahua;
north of which nothing is met with by the traveller, except the most
abject moral and physical misery.

Of course, our time passed most tediously; the half-breeds were too
stupid to converse with, and the Yankee traders constantly tipsy. Had it
not been that Gabriel was well acquainted with the neighbourhood, we
should positively have died of _ennui_. As it was, however, we made some
excursions among the _rancheros_, or cattle-breeders, and visited
several Indian tribes, with whom we hunted, waiting impatiently for a
westward-bound caravan.

One day, I had a rather serious adventure. Roche and Gabriel were
bear-hunting, while I, feeling tired, had remained in a rancho, where,
for a few days, we had had some amusement; in the afternoon, I felt an
inclination to eat some fish, and being told that at three or four miles
below, there was a creek full o