CHAPTER XV. THE JORNADA DEL MUERTO.

Near the southern boundary of New Mexico the Spanish explorers were opposed by a barrier of all on earth most to be dreaded--a shadeless, waterless plateau, nearly one hundred miles long, from five to thirty miles wide, resembling the steppes of Northern Asia. Geologists tell us this is the oldest country on the earth, except, perhaps, the backbone of Central Africa; at least the one which has longest exhibited its present conditions, the one longest exposed to the influence of agents now in action, and, hence, bearing the most deeply-marked records of their power.

The portion I speak of appears to have served its time, worn out, been dispeopled and forgotten. The grass is low and mossy, with a perishing look--the shrubs, soap-weed, and bony cactus writhing like some grisly skeleton; the very stones are like the scoria of a furnace. You vainly look for the flight of a bird, such as cheered the eyes of Thalaba in the desert; no bee nor fly hums the empty air; and, save the lizard (the genius of desolation) and horned frog, there is no breath of living thing.

Certain tribes of Arabia have no name for the sea, and, when they first came to its shore, they asked, with a sad wonder: “What is this strange desert of water, more beautiful than any land?” Standing on the edge of the measureless waste, which is trackless as water, the first explorers might ask: “What is this strange ocean of sand, with its stillness more awful than any sea?”

In places the dead level of the plain sweeps with the exactness of a sheet of water, encircling as with a shore-line mountain-walls which on the west shut off the Rio Grande, and frequently insulating whole peaks and ridges. Friendly showers fall there two months in the year, and, instead of storms of rain, in spring it is burned by those of dust and sand. They are caused by winds coming mainly from the northwest, carrying before them, like mist, clouds of pulverized sand and dust, and piling them in drifts when checked in their course. You can watch their progress as they approach, beginning in a thin haze along the horizon, for hours beforehand; and when they reach you the dust penetrates everything. You eat it, you drink it, you breathe it, you wear it like a coating, and the last handkerchief at the bottom of the box in your trunk is gritty and smells of alkali. The sand-storms, as they are called, usually last one, sometimes three days. Occasionally they appear a procession of whirlwind columns, such as are seen in autumn leaves, slowly moving across the desert in spectral dimness. Rejoice and be thankful if the tempest passes without striking. It will beat the mules without mercy and lash your face like a whip, if it reaches you.

Stories are told how, after a day of intense heat and lifeless silence, a dark cloud rapidly lowers from the sky of molten brass, and a sudden wind whirls the sand in mounds, and so shifts it from place to place. Horses and mules fall flat, with their noses to the ground; men lie down under blankets, from which the sand must be shaken occasionally, to escape being literally buried alive. Storms of such violence are rare, but every old frontiersman can tell you of more than one. The early Spaniards called the desert hot wind _solana_, in memory of Mancha and Andalusia. It heats the blood terribly, produces the utmost discomfort and nervous irritation. Hence the Castilian proverb: “Ask no favor while the solana blows.”

A variation of the simoom of the Orient, it cracks the skin, creates consuming thirst, and has been known to produce death.

The reader need hardly be reminded that the destruction of Sennacherib’s host is supposed to have been caused by the simoom. Undoubtedly, Byron had it in mind when he wrote the Hebrew melody, which has the majestic thunder-roll of organ music,

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.”

Once feel the parching, torrid heat; once face that suffocating desert-wind, and you readily comprehend death was instantaneous. There was no waste of miraculous force in the power which destroyed all the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains, in the camp of the king of Assyria

“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And _breathed_ in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew still.”

The spot I am trying to describe is the battle-ground of the elements. In winter it is made fearful by raging storms of wind and snow. There men and animals have been frozen to death, their bodies left the lawful prey of the mountain wolf. From the primeval years the Apache has harried the hungry waste, hunting for scalps; and, besides the savagest of savages, it is now the favorite skulking-place of outlaws, an asylum for fugitives escaping justice in old Mexico and Texas.

In our times many a party cut off and many a traveler murdered makes good the name it bears, given by the first white men who dared its perils: _Jornada del Muerto_--“Journey of Death.”

Reports of sun-scorch and lava beds, sand, sirocco, maddening thirst, and cheating mirage did not daunt the bold land-robbers from Spain. They were pledged to wrest their secrets from the mountains, and bring them to lay at the feet of their imperial master. Disciplined in the hardships of foreign wars, they lived for glory and worshiped Fortune. They had seen service in almost every clime. Some had tilted with the Moor; some had fought the infidel on the blue Danube, and hunted the Carib in Hispaniola; and later came captains whose waving plumes had been the colors to rally on when the royal standards were fallen. The mysterious country, mountain-locked and guarded by savage sentinels, who seemed to require neither rest, food, nor sleep, and were so fleet of foot they could outmarch the best cavalry horses, was a high stake, involving heavy risks and not to be lightly won. From accounts of Jesuit missionaries, who went with the cross, ready to die for their faith, the heroes of the seventeenth century learned that Nature in Nueva Espagña was not always in stormy mood. The fiery solana spent its strength in three days, and the lull following it was like clear shining after rain. If the snow of winter was deep, it was not lasting (only a Christmas storm); and friendly natives taught them that the stony Sierras could be brought to yield gold, silver, copper--all the precious metals.

Along their sides were sparkling springs, and at their feet green valleys, where Summer nestled long and lovingly--_pasturas_ in which an abiding June encamped and ruled the year. They were tufted with the short, delicate buffalo grass, lovely with its strange clusters of pistillate flowers and bunches of rosy stamens, and so strongly and closely matted it could well bear the tread of the monstrous Cibola (buffalo). Over all, like the purple mountain veils, threaded with fire, hung a delicious mystery.

The old-time heroes were deeply superstitious and well versed in legendary lore. As they penetrated the _Jornada_, spectral illusions haunted them. Demons lurked in the tall soap-weed, and glared over their tops, grimacing threateningly.

When, weakened by long fastings, the sky spun round, goblins, “with leathery wings like bats,” filled the air, and foul fiends, which could be exorcised only by prayer, made every step a terror. Fearless leaders, who regarded enterprise honorable in proportion to its peril, and had looked death in the face as if they loved it, quailed before the undiscovered country, the pathless _Jornada_.

In bivouac at sunset, there was much crossing of forehead and breast, murmur of aves and amens; not whispered, but outspoken, as became the “Swords of the Church.”

They set up their swords in the sand, knelt before the blessed sign on their hilts, and fervently prayed the Holy Mother’s protection. So comforted, they slept, perchance to dream of cool fountains in far _plazas_; of glassy ponds, with white-breasted swans asleep among the reeds and rushes on the margin; of rushing books, shaded by dripping willows; and the low undertone of the halcyon sea, whose soft-beating surf breaks on the shores of old Spain.

It is amusing to read of their superstitious dread of horned frogs, which hopped out of the way, then “turned and faced them with basilisk eyes.” The sameness of the scenes was sickening; the glare of the fierce sunshine blinded them; and, with cracked lips and burning eyes they hailed the mirage with shouts, and, horse and rider seeing eye to eye, they dashed away for the mocking lake, to curse the cheat and thirst the more.

Traversing the desert is not now what it was in the age of fable. The delusions of the past vanished with the darkness to which they belonged. We are living in better times. Summer, winter, moonbeam or starbeam will never shine on goblins more. The “leathery wings” have floated away from cactus thicket and mezquit jungle; ghost, fairy, demon, genii all have fled into the listening silence. They were phantoms following the century of credulity, whose foremost man, clear-eyed and conscientious, aimed his inkstand at the Devil, and whose veteran campaigner from the siege of Granada went wandering up and down the everglades of Florida, seeking an enchanted fountain--an ever-flowing spring, of which one draught would restore to his war-worn body the freshness of youth, and add to his term of life years enough to discover and conquer a third world.

The _Jornada_ still has its alarms; but men of the nineteenth century see no angry eyes in the red glow of sunset; overhead hovers no evil spirit of earth or air, under cover of night’s blue and starry banner.

The centre of the ninety-mile desert is now broken by a watering-place, the cheering oasis which relieves the long strain on body and soul. In 1871 Major John Martin dug one hundred and sixty feet, and struck a sweet, abundant fountain, deliciously cool, soft, with a slight taste of sulphur. Its depth is forty feet, and the heaviest draughts have never lessened the supply. It is pumped by a windmill, which the wind sometimes makes his own; and the gurgle and plash as the stream falls into the huge tanks, is a sound in the ear of the traveller sweet as his first hearing of the nightingale. Before the well was made water was hauled in barrels to the station from the Rio Grande, fifteen miles away. The nearest fuel at that point is eighteen miles distant.

At Fort Craig, the southern terminus of the solitary place, the modern tourist fills his water-kegs and canteens, tightens his cartridge-belt, and looks carefully to the condition of his animals. The loss of a breast-strap or horse-shoe would be a hindrance not easily overcome, and supplies of every kind must be carried. The road is excellent, and, if there is no accident, the well may be reached in one day’s journey. Even in its best aspect it is entered the first time with forebodings, a vague dread, like pushing out into an unknown sea. The sun-glare is so hard to bear that night is often the accepted time for the mournful crossing. As the sun declines, the lonesome dark falls like a drop-curtain. The stars flash out; the sky above, intensely clear, is a steel-blue shield, set thick with diamonds. A tropic brilliance fills it with a glow like the mild twilight of other latitudes, and the moon’s splendor makes beautiful even the seared and jagged cliffs of the Sierra de los Organos. Three thousand feet above the level of the river are their shafts, pale gray in the silvery light; masses of granite up-heaved in some mighty convulsion, long stilled, standing against the rainless blue like tombstones over a buried world.

If there is talk in the ambulance, it is in subdued tones. The assumption of cheerfulness by humming snatches of old songs is a dreary impertinence. Hour after hour we travel in silence, unbroken but by the grind of wheels plowing through the sandy soil. In answer to your utmost listening, you may catch the yelp of the red fox, or from the far-off mountain the coyote’s shrill cry. Sometimes the driver drops to sleep, and the wagon stops. Lift the canvas curtain, and look out. The soft wind blows in even cadence and swell, but meets only the hushed night and its burning lights. The Milky Way is a solid white gleam, where the invisible gods are walking. The missing stars are here. How low they swing in their serene and silent spaces. Beneath the solemn grandeur of the heavens, the work of Him in whom is no haste, no rest, no weariness, no failure, we bow in awe. What a little speck is our wagon-train; what an atom is self, the object round which our weak thoughts revolve.

The mountain-rim is restful to the sight. There are the gushing springs, cool as snow; and the shady pines, whose never ceasing song we cannot hear. How still it is! No ripple of water, no stir of leaf or bough, grass or blossom, or any green thing. Ominous crosses by the wayside mark the graves of travellers, scalped, tortured, and mangled. The weight of the tragedy is on us. We feel a near kinship to the sleepers below, and would not tremble to see them rise and shake their gory locks at us. The vacant space lies stark and unmoved, as it lay centuries ago, when the first gold-hunters, in fear and yet in triumph, braved its unknown depths. The prostrate plain, the rigid outlines of the naked landscape, the intolerable dumb lifelessness are indeed _del Muerto_.

And here I pause to describe the weapons used by wild tribes of Indians who infest the _Jornada_. On my wall, beside a victorious banner furled and bruised arms hung up for monuments, are the full equipments of an Apache chief, killed near Fort Stanton, New Mexico. The shield, made of thick, tanned buffalo hide, is stiff and hard, and resounds under your knuckles like a drum. In being made it was stretched over a light frame of basket-work and dried. It is twenty inches across, and as round as the shield of the elder Ossian.

An outer cover of dressed deer-skin envelops the buffalo hide, drawn smooth and gathered round the edge on the under side with a leather thread. Traced in blue-black ink on it are round figures, which may represent the sun or a spring, and zigzags, which by straining one’s fancy may be imagined to represent mountains.

At the upper rim of the shield are the decorations; three pea-fowl feathers, probably amulets, and a medicine-bag of black muslin containing a dry powder which the warrior rubs on his heart before going into battle, “to make it big and brave.”

A scrap of iridescent shell is fastened to the centre, and there on occasion, and around the edge, dangle bloody tufts, the reeking scalps of the enemy. It was carried on the left arm by two straps slipped over the hand, and was kept in motion while in action, by which means the hostile arrows glanced off.

But it was not proof against the mightier arms of the white race, and two bullet-holes through the shield show how the red chief came to his death.

The spear is an ugly weapon six feet long, about as thick as a broom-handle, and made of an extremely light wood, to me unknown, painted red in one band three inches wide near the head. The point is a piece of iron, probably an old Mexican bayonet, twenty-two inches long, socketed into the pole, and further strengthened in its place by a cord of deer-skin wrapped tightly round it many times.

Before Indians knew the use of iron, the spear, or lance, as it is usually called, was pointed with obsidian, or some other flinty substance, hammered and ground to a sharp edge. Sometimes the heel of the shaft is balanced with eagle feathers, while others are caught along the shaft, giving steadiness to the flight and gratifying the taste of the owner.

The quiver is twenty-seven inches long, is made of white cow-skin tanned with the hair on, sewed with a thread of deer-skin, and is large enough to contain a sheaf of two dozen arrows. A fringe of the same material dangles at each end of the quiver and adorns the waist-belt. When it was in use a band of cow-skin, four inches wide, held it across the shoulder.

The arrows are shafts two feet long, made of a species of yucca, tipped with hoop-iron and old knife-blades, which are roughly ground on each side, sharply pointed and edged, probably by rubbing with stone. They are winged with three feathers of the wild turkey, stripped from the quill and tied round the shaft at equal distances with very fine tendons, like the E violin string. The iron points are all that betray intercourse with white men, and were probably stolen from the refuse of some camp.

An Apache boy, of ten or twelve years of age, will strike a cent three times out of five at a distance of fifteen yards. Practice of bow-shooting begins as soon as these boys are old enough to hold the weapon, and ends only with death.

At fifty yards the well-pointed iron arrow is dangerous and sure, and the strong-armed Indian easily drives it through a two-inch plank. He can fire it more rapidly than an ordinary revolver, and even though he possesses “a heap firing-gun,” as he calls a repeating rifle, he is never without the silent, unerring and deadly iron-headed arrow.

It is far superior to the gun for night-surprises and taking off sentinels, and on the hunt half-a-dozen animals may be killed before the rest of the herd are alarmed. It is to be relied on when ammunition fails, and so light as to be worn without the least encumbrance.

The wary Indian is careful of his arrows, although he has many, wasting none in random shots, and keeping his quiver well filled. Sometimes a thousand arrows are buried in the grave of a chief, a sign that his death will be avenged by his tribe.

A narrow band of red on the feathered end of the shaft is the only attempt at ornamentation.

A fringed leather arm-guard, or bracelet, is worn round the left wrist, to defend it from the blow of the bow-string. Sometimes it is made of gray eagle feathers and the vari-colored tips of humming-birds’ wings.

In shooting-matches the contest is carried on by men and boys; betting is high and exciting, and sometimes entire fortunes such as a pair of moccasins, a pink calico shirt and blanket, are staked upon the hazard. The whole tribe, men, women and children, turn out as spectators. A bad shot is received with yells of derision, though failures by experts are rare. If the slender white wand aimed at is not touched, the shaft generally lodges in the circle of loose earth thrown up about the target to catch the arrows and prevent their blunting.

Said an old frontiersman to me, “I have never yet seen the Indian bow I could not break across my knee.” I doubt if he could crack the one now before me. Many a hand has tried to string it and failed, completely as the suitors in the classic story. It is of Osage orange forty-two inches long, bent in the graceful curvature poetry assigns to the bow of the god of love.

Formerly to this ornament the wild tribes added a mighty war-club of mezquit wood, flat and crescent-shaped, with a round ball at the end.

In all the Indian weapons there is no sense of grace in outline, except the curved bow, no elegance in the winging, no brilliance in the rough stains of poor color. They simply mean business; the effect of the group now before me is savage in the extreme.

Arm the warrior with them, mount him on a half-wild mustang which he guides with the knee, and he is a king of men. Place on his neck as a crowning garniture the ornament taken from the body of the fallen chief, and round his neck put a piece of doubled horsehide, with two rattle-snakes’ tails, each containing eleven rattles dangling from it. Imagine the brutish face painted in hideous stripes, vermilion and blue; the buffalo-robe blanket, the wild hair flying, the long lance whirling, brandished in air, and add, if you can, the war-whoop, a yell--

--“As if the fiends from heaven that fell Had pealed the banner cry of hell.”

Then you will have a picture of an Apache Indian.