CHAPTER XIV. AMONG THE ARCHIVES. (_Continued._)

A few miles from Zuni, as we move eastward, there gradually comes to view a bold, high, sandstone rock, a quadrangular wall, white, veined with yellow, named Inscription Rock. It is nearly a mile in length and more than two hundred feet in height. Approaching it, tower and turret, architrave and pillar rise slowly into view. We see a mighty structure Nature has wrought in noble architecture, and that no extravagant coloring gave it the old Spanish name _El Moro_--The Castle. The surface of the mountain-wall on the north and south faces is written over with names otherwise lost to history, records that light the dark way like shining torches. Some are deeply and beautifully cut into the plane surface and reach back more than three hundred years. The older inscriptions are Spanish, carefully graven upon the vertical faces, about the height of a man’s head from the ground. Usually a date, a brief memorandum of the purpose and line of march of the Castilian soldiery, the names of travellers exploring the country, or Franciscan friars going into the wilderness in search of the lost tribes of Israel.

At the foot of the towering steep is a gushing spring of sparkling water, and fresh grass, such as is not often seen except in narrow valleys among the arid plains of the territories. After rest, food, siesta, the traveler, looking up to the immense table of stone before him, naturally adds his own name to the constantly-increasing list on the written mountain, which has now grown into a confused mass of hieroglyphs--Indian signs, the favorite being the track of a moccasin, indicative of marching; decayed and decaying inscriptions, and names of old adventurers. Let us loiter awhile and read, for it is not often such a register is laid open to any tourist.

Close to the left corner, almost hidden by brushwood, is the oldest date, engraved in the rock nearly a century before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers--Don José de Basconzales, 1526. This is the sole record of his expedition, at once his history and his cenotaph. He went with an exploring party from the City of Mexico, and never returned; nor were they heard of after leaving Zuni. Whether they perished in secret defiles, cut off by the skulking Apache, who dogged every step of the invader, or gave out through fatigue and thirst in the deep cañons and sterile _vegas_, belongs to the voiceless past. In some unnamed spot he sleeps with the silent majority--a mighty company.

In the moist air of England these letters would be mossed over and wholly illegible; but the dry, dewless air of New Mexico holds decay in check, and in this regard almost equals the atmosphere of Egypt. Among recent inscriptions appear the autographs of the United States explorers--Whipple, Simpson, and others; and still nearer our day the signs manual of the Smiths, Joneses, Browns, and the rest. The sixth name on the list is the one whose fortunes we are trying to trace out and follow, less for the sake of his king and country than because he was attended by the true love and faithful knight of the little Rose of Castile.

It runs: Here passed Don Diego de Bargas, to conquer Santa Fé for the royal crown, New Mexico, at his own cost, in the year 1692.

Many secrets we cannot guess are hidden in the silence there, with the sands of ages drifted above them; but it is plain to see Vargas was in high feather when he made his proud record on the wall of El Moro. Observe the pert little crow, “at his own cost.”

Luckily, there is still extant a number of documents bearing on his administration among the state papers at Santa Fé, or we might think the princely fellow, going out conquering and to conquer, scattered commissions and victories with a free hand.

How La Villa Real de Santa Fé was lost and won is an old tale and often told, and details of battles, at least of Indian fighting, are not interesting. Enough that, after the summer camp at or near Old Zuni, Vargas with his army pressed on to the siege of the Capital. The slayers were a few hundreds of white men, with red allies; the slain were of a number that has never been reckoned.

Father Francisco Corvera administered absolution to the entire command before battle, and, as the foreign army was preparing for a general onslaught, the Pueblos stole out in the night, leaving the city in possession of the fair race which left nothing but desolation in its track.

The brutal instincts of this Vargas (whom I hate, and the judicious reader must hate too) hardened and intensified with increasing power and advancing years. One of the worst of his bad race, he labored unceasingly for the conversion of the aborigines. His position allowed immeasurable sweep for cruelty which we may be sure he enjoyed to the utmost, and the cross became the object of bitter hatred to the heathen he claimed for an inheritance. He it was who wrote to the viceroy of Mexico, applying for more troops to carry on the crusade: “You might as well try to convert Jews without the Inquisition as Indians without soldiers.”

Notwithstanding his religious zeal and boast recorded on Inscription Rock at Zuni, Vargas missed the high place at which he aimed, not, like Columbus and Cortez, because he deserved too greatly, but because the regiment in garrison and the corporation of Santa Fé, in 1695, presented charges to the viceroy, Count Galvas, against him for peculation. He was accused of using public money for private purposes; of drawing on the public treasury for purchase of corn, mules, etc. for settlers, and of selling them and pocketing the proceeds. “Also of having drawn drafts and received moneys for expenses never incurred.”

He was removed from office 1697, and with him, doubtless, the faithful knight and true love, Don Antonio Eusebio de Cubero, who we will believe had the soul of a true knight, and no part or lot in these ignoble transactions.

Whatever he was, Rosita saw him with eyes anointed; from the beginning a hero predestined to triumph on every field he might enter. I do believe that, in the rough campaigning through the land of sand and thorn, he kept her lovely face--the Millais face--in his heart of hearts. That he never vowed a vow nor kissed a kiss that was not hers, and, loyal to his own Rose of Castile, as he was to his king, he marched in the triumph through the streets of Seville. There minstrels and troubadours hymned high praises (_romances_ they were called), and bright lady-loves waved silken scarfs to the _conquistadores_, home from the far New World. They were men in the bloom of youth, the very flower of the Peninsula, and Antonio Eusebio de Cubero was proudest and noblest where all were proud and many noble.

From the arched window, set in quaint fretwork and arabesques, Rosita looked out and the banner over her was love. Perhaps the Millais face--that eager, anxious, haunting face--flushed a little at sight of the grand parade in the pomp and circumstance the old Spaniard loved so well. The soft, dark eyes were not bewildered by the rich confusion of color, the far-floating flags, the dazzle of steel and of silver. Swift glances singled out one beneath the wavy folds of the royal standard, brave as he was beautiful, whose prancing steed, flashing arms, crest, and plume were familiar, whose sash her own soft hands embroidered.

Let us picture reunion after years of separation, joy after anguish, the rapture of rescue from peril, and so leave them, walking with happy feet by the bed of sweet basil, as the first lovers walked in the cool of the day under the palms of Paradise.

While I write, the letter of the dear, dead woman lies on the table before me; the fading sign from a rose-leaf hand that has been part of the dust of old Spain so many and many a year. Frail thing, most perishable, outlasting kings, thrones, the wrecks of states, the decay of ages! Closing day finds me dreaming over it in the waning light. I look to the purpling hills. As the sun sinks, they change to fairy tents, under a line of exquisite color, pink, orange, pale sea green, the changeful fringe on the banner of night, ending far up the zenith in a field of spotless azure. In the farness of the distance the cold, white peaks of the Stony mountains warm for one supreme moment in the solemn beauty of the after-glow, their summits clear-cut against the rainless blue.

Rapidly the shadows deepen. Violet changes to leaden hues, rose dims to pearl gray, the flushed white foreheads pale, the fires of sunset burn out, and the short twilight, ending in gloom, is the day’s burial.

Human phantoms flit across the dusky spaces. King and priest, savage and Christian, knight and lady, shadows all, passing within the mighty shadow. Under the low window I hear the tramp of feet pacing to and fro like the ebb and flow of the tide. The hurrying feet are ghost-like, too, chasing the flying specters’ gold and fame. History is but repeating itself. The restless, dissatisfied souls of the New World are the same brotherhood as those of the Castiles; the same as when Solomon sent ships from Tarshish to bring back gold of Ophir; the same jealous souls as when the king was wroth because the people shouted, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands. Now, as then, morning and evening bring their old beauty, the cooling balm of the breeze follows the burning day. The west wind cools no fever of heart or brain; still are men searching for signs of gold and fighting the old battle against oblivion, and still do loving women sit by solitary fires and wait for them to come. These things have not changed; they will never change. Humanity remains the same.

The foreign charm which was the dower of the historic city is dying fast, but not quite dead. The spell, long lingering, is slow to pass away, though student and antiquary are blowing the dust from the books of Chronicles and letting the white light of day into obscured and darkened chambers.

In this dimness once glowed the poetic coloring of romance and chivalry, in which the valorous Espego and his knights founded the City of Holy Faith. If the ghosts of the venturesome heroes revisit the field of their victories, they may yet be reminded of soft Andalusia. There is a hint of Castilian grace in the vanishing _sombrero_, in the folds of the ever-falling but never-fallen _rebosa_, a touch of passing sweetness in the prolonged _adios_. Blent with the familiar benediction, now in my ear, “_Vago usted con Dios que usted lo pase bien_” (“May you depart with God and continue well”), the hovering shades might hear the dreamy plash of bright fountains and the light love song under the barred windows of fair Cordova.