ellowed with age. Those _vigas_ have witnessed
strange figures stalking the spacious halls below. If the ceiling beams
could throw their memories on some moving picture screen, there would be
such a panorama of varied personages as no other palace in the world has
witnessed. Leave out the hackneyed tale of General Lew Wallace writing
"Ben Hur" in a back room of the Palace; or the fact that three different
flags flung their folds over old Santa Fe in a single century. He who
knows anything at all about Santa Fe, knows that Spanish power gave
place to Mexican, and the Mexican regime to American rule. Also, that
General Lew Wallace wrote "Ben Hur" in a back room of the Palace, while
he was governor of New Mexico. And you only have to use your eyes to
know that Santa Fe, itself, is a bit of old Spain set down in the modern
United States of America. The donkeys trotting to market under loads of
wood, the ragged peon riders bestriding burros no higher than a saw
horse, the natives stalking past in bright serape or blanket, moccasined
and hatless--all tell you that you are in a region remote from
latter-day America.

But here is another sort of picture panorama! It is between 1680 and
1710.

A hatless youth, swarthy from five years of terrible exposure, hair
straight as a string, gabbling French but speaking no Spanish, a slave
white traded from Indian tribe to Indian tribe, all the way from the
Gulf of Mexico to the interior of New Spain, is brought before the
viceroy. Do you know who he is? He is Jean L'Archeveque, the
French-Canadian lad who helped to murder La Salle down on Trinity Bay in
Texas. What are the French doing down on Trinity Bay? Do they intend to
explore and claim this part of America, too? In the abuses of slavery
among the Indians for five years, the lad has paid the terrible penalty
for the crime into which he was betrayed by his youth. He is scarred
with wounds and beatings. He is too guilt-stricken ever to return to New
France. His information may be useful to New Spain; so he is enrolled in
the guards of the Spanish Viceroy of Santa Fe; and he is sent out to San
Ildefonso and Santa Clara, where he founds a family and where his
records may be seen to this day. For those copy-book moralists who like
to know that Divine retribution occasionally works out in daily life, it
may be added that Jean L'Archeveque finally came to as violent a death
as he had brought to the great French explorer, La Salle.

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