CHAPTER IX. TO THE TURQUOIS MINES, (_Continued._)

At evening the gentle shepherd of New Mexico leads his flock from high pastures, where the precipitation of moisture is greatest and, therefore, grass is freshest, to the fold, or corral, in the valley. It is precisely the pattern of fold abounding in Palestine and still to be seen on the outskirts of Alexandria--an enclosure made by crooked stakes driven in the ground, poorly held together by strips of rawhide. No two are of the same length. All were twisted and gnarled in the growing, and lean out of the perpendicular. A shabby fence, uglier than everything except a mud fence, which the reader knows is the superlative ugliness. By the light of the moon we noted the fashion of the shepherd’s Cain-and-Abel suit of goatskin; and, instead of the classic crook, wreathed with garlands gathered in flowery meadows, the Rocky Mountain Endymion guarded his flock with a shotgun and bowie-knife, less fearful of the wolf than of his own thieving countrymen.

We observe another Asian custom here, that of sleeping on the roofs in summer. The heavenly nights invite one out, and the flat housetop is a much pleasanter place to make one’s bed than the cellar-like interior, with its earthly scents. The sluggard Mexican, who has killed the long hours of the common enemy by dozing in the sun, rouses toward sunset and spreads out the _colchon_, or wool mattress, if they are very poor, or a bed of skins. The stairway is a rickety ladder, leaning against the outer wall of the mud house, and the rapidity and ease with which the natives go up and down is surprising. I have seen women carry jars of water on their head, not spilling a drop, as they ascend the ladder, touching it only with their feet. The old people--mummies of the time of Cheops--go to bed at sunset; a little later the children and chickens hop up the loose rounds; then the lord of the estate, and his dusky spouse, with her cat; and lastly the ratty dogs, moving nimbly, as the trained ones of the circus. Haul up the ladder, and the castle is secure. There is no fear of rain. There is no dew, no fog or mist, to blur the clear shining of the stars above. The low wind is the very breath of heaven; the bright night is filled with sleep.

So slept the Saviour of the world on the housetop of Lazarus, at Bethany, whither he had walked in the cool of the day. Looking from that lowly bed toward the many mansions of his Father’s house, well might the homeless guest utter the pathetic cry: “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”

Near the City of the Pueblos, within sight of the graceful spire of the Sisters’ Chapel, was a coyote tearing a stray lamb to pieces. We had met the ninety-and-nine an hour before, returning to the fold from the river. The wild, tameless creature there was in perfect keeping with the continued newness of a country where white men have lived nearly three centuries. He started, looked fearlessly out of the sage-bush, and the clear moonlight outlined the true wolf’s head, with its fox-like muzzle and sharp, forward-pointed ears. He glared at us a moment, and then quietly and leisurely stalked away, amid a general lament that we had neither gun nor pistol at hand. The beast was of the “Æsop’s Fable” breed--a large, handsome fellow, whose pictorial pelt would have made an elegant foot-rug.

Let me not close without idling what became of the “regular bonanza.” The day after our return to Santa Fé, the many-named Mexican called, bringing his fine _chalchuite_. He explained, with impressive gesture and rhetorical flourish, he was too poor to own so rich a jewel, fit for the king’s son, and would sell it, if _la Senora_ would pay him--naming the price. At first I was appalled at the magnitude of the sum; but the stone of inimitable hue, lying in the lean, brown hand, had a sort of magnetism. The familiar tint was charming, matching as it did a tiny ring long worn for remembrance, and with much cracked Spanish and broken English, a bargain was made, and we parted, with many a cordial _adios_. No, not even in the close confidence of print will I tell you, beloved, the price of the princely jewel. The secret will go with me to the grave. Enough that it was exhaustive. I am blushing over it yet.

The following week I heard a low whisper that Juan Fresco did not find the turquois at _Los Cerillos_; but got it in a trade with a wild savage, ignorant of its worth. A Navajo, allowed to leave the Reservation, under protection of a pass, and pay a stealthy visit to his own hunting-grounds, had let it go for four yards of red flannel. Cool John had slyly arranged the whole affair, and whisked the stone out of his sleeve in the very nick of time. Fortune turned his head, as she has many a stronger one. He retired from the box, and set up a saloon, the “San Francisco,” under a bower of cedar boughs, in the near mining camp. Being of a convivial turn, in spite of mournful eyes and voice, at last accounts, Juan Fresco was his own best customer at the bar.

However, I had my costly prize, and in the seclusion of my own room gloated over it, and fearful of burglars, hid it at night under the edge of the carpet behind the bureau. After much deliberation regarding the shape in which it would best appear, I sent the _chalchuite_ to the leading jeweler of New York. Too precious for the mail, it went express, and I carefully held a receipt for its full value. In good time the little lavender-box returned by mail. I untied the string with nervous haste and lo! my pattern locket lapped in red cotton, and the “regular bonanza.”

A brief note explained Messrs. B. & B’s “regret to state the sample of turquois will not endure polish or cutting. The color is a mere surface stain on gneiss, and easily scales off, exposing the brown stone, as you may readily discover by trying it with your scissors-point. We have received several such specimens from New Mexico. They have no commercial value. This has none whatever, except to its owner.”

Then I felt like the tender poet who sends off a song that is his heart’s delight, and receives next week a very precious letter, in familiar handwriting, accompanied by a printed circular, bearing the awful words, “Declined, with thanks.”

* * * * *

Yesterday I examined a collection of relics--not exquisitely beautiful, but exquisitely old--from various points along the valleys of the San Pedro, the Gila, and the Rio Grande. They were mainly broken potteries, a few sacred whispering-stones from old _estufas_, rude arms of _iztli_, and the familiar flint arrows, such as have been discovered in every portion of the globe where there are graves of men. Among many trinkets offered, I chose a little looking-glass of _iztli_, and an amulet of _chalchuite_ from the ruins of a prehistoric city near El Paso. It was close to the Texas line, and within the limit of the mound-builders’ region. I selected these trifles because they were feminine belongings, and brought me nearer than the pipes and hatchets could bring me to my dead and gone sisters. The mirror, about half the size of your hand, is made of _iztli_, or obsidian, an exceedingly hard, vitreous substance, plentiful in volcanic countries, of smoky tint, and capable of high polish. The art of working this intractable material is practically lost in our times, but when wrought by the Indigene was useful as iron or tempered steel.[16]

The amulet and twenty beads of _chalchuite_ were hidden in a black glazed jar, of the shape made by natives to-day, buried in a cave many feet below the surface of the ground. It was accidentally opened, in 1878, by a party of miners digging for silver. Probably a treasure-house, abandoned at the last moment, when the besieged inhabitants fled before a victorious army. Stone hammers were found near the cave, arrow-heads, hatchets, serrated swords of _iztli_, like the Aztecan, and half a human skull, evidently broken by a blow of the hatchet or tomahawk.

The amulet is perhaps half an inch long, one-eighth of an inch thick--an irregular square, rudely carved and smoothed, probably by rubbing with another stone. The veining on one side gives the semblance of a star. A hard tool and patient hand must have been required to drill a hole through this stubborn stone. The string which threaded it has gone to dust; the hand which carved it and the race of which it is a faint trace are vanished into the voiceless past. Long lines of prostrate walls, miles of _acequias_, or irrigating ditches, broken potteries, profusely scattered, indicate a dense population once held the valley near El Paso, and lived in cities containing twenty thousand or thirty thousand souls. There is no reason to believe the modern inhabitants of this country belong to a proud line, shorn of its ancient splendors. They have no sort of history, and among a people without written language, poetry, or music, tradition soon becomes confused. All their remains and three hundred years of continuous history show they have steadily declined in power and numbers; but they are and have always been miserably poor. Their fabrics, arms, architecture are of the coarsest, most primitive description.

The vessels of silver and of gold described by early explorers to a waiting and expectant world have not been found in this or any other spot in New Mexico. They existed only in the fevered fancies of adventurers, blinded by their own imaginings, drunk with their own conceits. If metals we count valuable were concealed in the ancient treasure-house, they are lost in the deep grave with the dead centuries. Only these trifling memorials have escaped the common doom.

My amulet is a sorry love-token; yet, for the sake of the soft meaning it once bore, I touch the trinket lightly. Rude in outline, utterly lacking in grace and luster, it represents a Western idyl.

Young were the lovers, I know (for love is ever young), and to eyes beloved each was beautiful and true. Perhaps she stood like Ruth among the corn, as the warm blood flushed his face, when he bound it with his love as a crown unto her, fastening it with vows, and promises, and never-ending kisses. Or did he set it as a seal upon her arm, making its pulses beat fast to a new music, under the secret magic of its circle? Or was it hung on her neck, above the heart which fluttered like a caught bird at its touch, in the hour which comes but once in a lifetime? Ah, well you know, gentle reader, how she cherished the keepsake, and pondered it over when his face was not there, little dreaming how one of a race unheard of should, centuries afterward, dream over it too, and call back her spirit from out the unrecorded past, her gracious presence and tender words.

All, all gone now. My young mound-builders--if mound-builders they were--sleep with the primeval giants. And, while a thousand wonderments hover about the poor keepsake, this only we do know: that they walked blindly along the path we call life; slowly, and with many a failure, worked out their destiny. They loved, sinned and suffered, died, and were forgotten. The surface of the country is altered since that old love-making. Strong cities are leveled with the plains, tribes are scattered, languages lost, whole races are extinct; but humanity remains the same--the one thing that will outlast the world. These dead-and-gone tribes were not foreign to us. They were of our own blood, our elder brethren; and as their names and deeds are blotted out, leaving not a memory, so we are moving forward in the resistless march, holding in our hands messages appealing to futurity--messages addressed to darkness, dropped into oblivion.

The relics from the Rio Grande were buried down deep. Perhaps my young lovers whispered the sweet words which made Eden Paradise, before the witching eyes of Marie Stuart turned the hearts of men; before Cleopatra shone; before Lucretia spun. The _chalchuite_ might lie in this rare, dry air till the crack of doom and suffer no change, as our old earth swings through the constellations, year by year. Possibly, its wearer was contemporary with the man of Natchez, whose bones were exhumed not long ago, under the Mississippi bluffs, in strata said to prove him not less than one hundred thousand years old.

If the story were told, we might not care to know what manner of man the bygone mound-builder was. His history must have been one of wars, and the struggles of the chiefs were trivial and petty to that of mighty Hector and Agamemnon, if we accept the testimony of the remains which still exist. Let us believe we lost no grand epic in the Iliad of the lost race.

The great historian wisely says: “The annals of mankind have never been written, can never be written, nor would it be within the limits of human capacity to read them, if they were written. We have a leaf or two torn from the great book of human fate, as it flutters in the storm-winds ever sweeping across the earth; but we have no other light to guide us across the track which all must tread, save the long glimmering of yesterdays, which grows so swiftly fainter and fainter, as the present fades off into the past.”

FOOTNOTE:

[16] It is said by Pliny to have been discovered first in Ethiopia, by a man named Obsidius. Hence the name. Gems and whole statues were made of it. He also speaks of four elephants of obsidian dedicated by Augustus in the Temple of Concord.