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Show 224 WESTERN WILDS. son of a lady of the Alarid family married to Sefior Vigil. In like manner my young friends insisted that my rough Saxon patronymic did not suit the soft Castilian, and I became Sefior Juan de Bidello. All Spanish- Americans are brilliant in nomenclature. The full name of a cowherd sounds like the title of a grandee. Americans who set-tle in the country very often translate their own names, or give them a Castilian termination. By such process Mr. Meadows becomes Sefior Las Vegas; John Boggs, Sefior Juan de Palos; and Jim Gibbons flowers out as Don Santiago de Gibbonoise. An Irishman from Den-ver settled near El Paso, married a wealthy Mexican lady, and lives in style; his original name, Tim Murphy, is long since forgotten, and he signs his bank checks as Timotheus Murfando. Twelve days I wandered about Santa Fe, finding much to interest, and picking up a smattering of the language to serve me in my trav-els westward. Daily I studied the routes through Arizona, and each day brought fresh tales of disaster. First came a Mexican from El Paso, whose two companions were killed by Indians on the edge of the Jornada del Muerto ; and next a ranchero from the south- western border, whose Mexican herders were killed, and all his stock run off by the Mescalero Apaches. And while he was . yet speaking came another messenger, and said that nine prospectors, who left by the northern route, went too far south, fell into an ambuscade, and " their scalps now ornament the lodges of Collyer's pets." Simultaneously a lieutenant and sergeant of cavalry were ambuscaded in the Alamosa and their animals " niched" with arrows. Drawing their revolvers, they dashed bravely on, firing right and left, knowing that to be their only chance for life, and, by rare good fortune, got through and into the open plain. Sorely wounded, and compelled to abandon their exhausted animals, only the darkness of night prevented their capture. We next receive Arizona papers with the information that the east-ern coach was attacked near Tucson, and the driver and messenger 7 O killed; and that the western coach was robbed beyond Fort Yuma by Mexican ladrones, and the station- keeper and one messenger mur-dered. The white population of Arizona was 9,600, and they then averaged a loss of twenty per month by Apaches and Mexicans about half the ordinary mortality of an army. All things considered, I concluded to try the northern route. A soldier was about to start for Fort Wingate with a wagon- load of provisions ; and General My-ers, quartermaster, kindly gave me passage with him. From Win-gate I thought to catch some kind of an expedition to Prescott. |