1859.] PREACHING EASIER THAN PRACTICE.

235

CHAPTER XX.

PASSING a little Mexican house with roof and chimney of adobe, walls of upright poles and gables of cotton cloth, we reached Fort Davis, four thousand two hundred feet above sea level, named in honor of Jefferson Davis while he was secretary of war. The site is of unequaled beauty: surrounded by tall conical mountains and fronting upon a fair valley. The buildings are of dark stone with straw-thatched roofs; and noble trees shade the grounds.

Twenty miles beyond we crossed the highest ridge between St. Louis and El Paso. The California general was still on board, and an army colonel now joined us. At the first station, the little stage mules were so wild that they could only be caught in the stable yard by lassoing them. When we started they proved altogether unmanageable. In the headlong race, while the coach was poised on two wheels, I sprang out. The vehicle barely avoided capsizing; and after a circuit of a mile, the driver brought his riotous steeds around again and stopped for me to re-enter.

'My friend,' observed the colonel, 'you are fortunate to escape a broken neck.' 'Whatever happens, always stick to the coach.' 'And,' added the general, 'never jump out over a wheel!'

Scarcely had these golden axioms been uttered, when the spirits of our mules again effervesced. The coach was transformed into a pitching schooner, which the bounding billows of prairie tossed and rolled and threatened to wreck. I kept in the vehicle; but both my military companions jumped headlong over a hind-wheel to the sure and firm-set earth. After that climax, equilibrium was restored; but the colonel picked up with a sprained ancle, and the general, with a severely bruised foot, both seemed in doubt whether to laugh or fight, when their own wise counsel was repeated to them.

236

THE COLONEL RETIRES DISABLED.

[1859. The country was dreary enough to recall the traveler's experience among the barren hills of Virginia. In a specially forbidding region, he passed a tumble-down log-hut with old hats stuffed in the windows. At one aperture appeared a face surmounted by a shock of hair and half-hidden in an ambush of wrinkles.

'I say, stranger!' shouted its owner; 'I'm not so poor as you think. I don't own all this land about here!'

Our natural mountain road was equal to the best turnpike. Among the many species of cactus, one low, turnip-shaped plant holds in its rough thorny skin a watery pulp, which quenches the thirst of man and beast. Another common variety, the spanish

THE SPANISH BAYONET.

bayonet, is here ten feet high, its upright stem crowned with long sharp spurs like bayonets, so firm that it is said they will pierce through the body of

a man.

October 4.-At daylight we reached the Rio Grande and looked across it upon Mexican Three dirty blanketed

barefoot men smoking cigarettes, shivered over the fire on the river bank, where two Mexican women cooked our breakfast of frijoles.

At Fort Quitman, whose whitewashed adobe buildings look like marble, we left the colonel, so lame that his Irish servant lifted

him from the coach like a baby. The general while asleep had lost his hat overboard, for the second time within forty-eight hours. Unable to purchase a new one he wrapt his head in a fiery red comforter, like a sanguinary and turbaned Turk.

We continued up the sandy valley of the Rio Grande, from five to forty miles wide, and bounded on the west by a notched line of

1859.] FIRST LINE ACROSS THE CONTINENT.

237

mountains. We passed Mexican villages, where bright-eyed, dusky-faced, half-naked children were playing about the streets, and through open doors women were visible in very simple dress or undress, reclining upon matresses, gossiping and smoking cigarettes. Toward evening we were among ranches, herds of cattle, and great corn-fields. There are no fences; but all cattle are watched by herders from planting-time until November. Water is conveyed from the river through ditches to every portion of the farms. In this sandy soil and rainless climate, no crop can be raised without irrigation.

Passing the pleasant, shaded Mexican hamlet of Socorro, with quaint old churches and low houses of adobe, and Ysletta, a Pueblo Indian settlement with its tall white cathedral, we reached El Paso at eight in the evening, having traveled ninety miles since dawn, and two hundred and twenty-six during the last thirty-four hours.

El Paso, twelve hundred miles from St. Louis and from San Francisco, was the half-way point on the great Overland route. This was the first rapid line across the continent. John Butterfield and his associates were paid six hundred thousand sand dollars a year for carrying tri-weekly mails between St. Louis and San Francisco. Ruling influences in Congress and the White House compelled them to adopt a far southern route through the Indian Territory, Texas and Arizona; while a branch line from Memphis also joined the main stem at Fort Smith, Arkansas. The coaches ran day and night, ordinarily going from St. Louis to San Francisco in twenty-one days, though the law allowed twenty-five. It was the longest stage route in the world.

To establish this line three thousand miles across mountains, deserts, dangerous rivers and the territory of hostile Indians, was a gigantic enterprise. The stages ran by a time-table, and with so much regularity that during twelve months there had not been a single failure to deliver the mail on schedule time. Every day for two winter months, near the middle of the long route, the coaches from St. Louis met those from San Francisco within three hundred yards of the same spot. The through fare was a hundred and fifty dollars, exclusive of meals, which cost from forty cents to one dollar. The line continued in operation till the war broke

238

'OUT WEST' ON ITS TRAVELS.

[1859. out in 1861, when the Texans and Arkansans seized most of the mules and coaches. It was then removed to the central route. The Wells-Fargo company, composed of the same stockholders, now carry mails and passengers from the western termini of the Kansas and Nebraska railways, via Denver Salt Lake and Nevada, to California.

The early settlers upon Massachusetts bay, after exploring the country for twenty miles 'out West,' reported the fact with triumphant surprise, and boasted that the soil was tillable for that entire distance. Most adults remember when Buffalo was spoken of as 'out West.' How rapidly the application of that familiar phrase has since moved toward the setting sun! Now, on this remotest frontier, I heard a merchant speak of sending goods 'out West.' 'And pray,' I asked, 'where may that be?'

'O,' he replied carelessly, 'about a hundred miles over into Mexico." 1-%

The Texan town of El Paso had four hundred inhabitants, chiefly Mexicans. Its business men were Americans, but Spanish was the prevailing language. All the features were Mexican: low, flat, adobe buildings, shading cottonwoods under which dusky, smoking women and swarthy children sold fruit, vegetables, and bread; habitual gambling universal, from the boy's game of pitching quartillas (three cent coins) to the great saloons where huge piles of silver dollars were staked at monte. In this little village, a hundred thousand dollars often changed hands in a single night through the potent agencies of monte and poker. There were only two or three American ladies; and most of the whites kept Mexican mistresses. All goods were brought on wagons from the Gulf of Mexico, and sold at an advance of three or four hundred per cent.. on eastern prices.

From hills overlooking the town, the eye takes in a charming picture a far-stretching valley, enriched with orchards, vineyards and corn-fields, through which the river traces a shining pathway. Across it appear the flat roofs and cathedral towers of the old Mexican El Paso; still further, dim misty mountains melt into the blue sky.

*A native word, signifying the home or seat of Mextilli, the Aztec god of war.