OCR Text |
Show JOURNEY TO THE RIO GRANDE. 227 say " ah," " yes/' and " no " at nearly the right place, and that is the most required to keep a Mexican woman social. My companion, jolly drunk, was barely able to get his team into the corral, when he fell back into the wagon asleep, and, as he was the cook of our outfit, I was obliged to stay o^ rer night at the hotel. Except the two houses mentioned, the whole town is of a uniform dull clay color, walls of of mud, fences of mud, door and window- casings of mud- colored wood, roofs of slightly sloping poles, covered with earth two or three feet thick, floors of native earth beaten hard, and nowhere a patch of grass to relieve the wearied eye. It is one of the few Mexican towns not named after some saint; La Bajada means " The Descent," the words being pronounced together, Lavvahadda. Thence, in the cool of the morning, we journey at a sobre passo gait of two miles an hour, down the valley towards the Rio Grande. The first point of interest is the Pueblo of Santo Domingo, where I visit for an hour. The houses are all in a bunch ; a few have doors, but most are still entered from the roof, there being a ladder or rude stairway at the corner. All the men were in the public field at work, and the women and children appeared strangely quiet and undemonstrative. The only man I met accompanied me three miles on the road. He gave his name as Antonio Gomez, and talked fluently of their mode of life and system of government. We were more social, indeed, than could have been expected of men with but a few hundred words in common ; but words are like dollars a few go a long ways when one is pinched. But my main question : " How many years since your people ' first came here ?" he answered, with a laugh : " Quidn sabe ? Quisas doce quinientos !" ( Who knows? Perhaps a dozen times five hundred !) They generally reckon by tens ; are seldom able to count high numbers, and any thing above two or three hundred is " infinity," vaguely expressed by quinientos. Three miles brought us down into a beautiful vega, containing some two miles square of rich, natural meadow, on which the Pueblos had several hundred head of horses and mules. My companion pointed out with some pride his own manada of sixty mules and mares, at-tended by his three boys, and urged me to stop at his rancheria and take dinner. But appearances were not inviting, so I plead no tiempo, and hurried on after the team, Antonio leaving me with a friendly grasp, and, " Addio, Senor, pasa buenas dies." ( May you pass good days.) A little farther on we drove within a quarter of a mile of the river, where some twenty Pueblos were hauling a rude seine. They held up some good- sized fish, shouting the price, but, on my de- |