Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/527

Charles Dickens]

This landlord once upon a day,
 * Fell sick and like to die,

And sent for me as well as the priest,
 * Though I could not tell for why.

"Harry," says he, "I've pisoned the beer,
 * 'Tis the very truth I've spoke;

Yet prayed at church on Sabbath-days
 * Along with the Christian folk.

"Why didn't they nail my ears to the post?
 * They'd done it in days gone by!

And perhaps I wouldn't ha' pisoned the poor
 * Wi' drugs to make them dry.

"Wi' drugs to make them wery dry,
 * So that the more they drank,

The more they thirsted and wished to swill
 * Like horses at a tank.

"I'm a sneak, a thief, and a hypocrite,
 * And perhaps a murderer, too,

Though I'm glad to see, 'mid all my sins,
 * As I've not murdered you.

"But when I think on Dick that swung,
 * Aloft on the gallows tree,

I've mortal fear, 'twas the pisoned beer
 * That was the ruin of he.

"And his ghost comes prowling every night,
 * And chatters at my bed,

And when I looks on its dreadful face,
 * I wishes that I was dead.

"And I feel I'm going, Harry," says he,
 * "And a wery bad man I've been,

Though I've made a heap of dirty gold,
 * That I wishes I'd never seen.

"Good bye! good bye! I'm going to die!
 * I cannot abear them ghosts

That come every night with horrid grins,
 * Not one, or two, but hosts."

And this landlord was as good as his word,
 * For he died the wery next night,

And I'm truly glad I was not him,
 * For all his guineas bright.

And it's my opinion, if I'm fit
 * To form a judgment clear,

That the wery worst thing a man can do
 * Is to pison the people's beer!

NATIVE TRIBES OF NEW MEXICO.

IN THREE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER III. man, although he lives by the destruction of life, animal as well as vegetable, takes care to reproduce by artificial means as much as, if not more than, he destroys; the savage, however, does not always do this, and when he does not, surely this is a proof that he is not destined by Providence permanently to exist.

Most conspicuous amongst the latter class are the Navajos and Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona—the hereditary enemies of the cultivator of the soil, whether he be Aztec, Mexican, or Anglo-Saxon—the savages, by means of whom the whole country has been nearly swept of its inhabitants, and changed from a fertile garden into a barren waste.

The Navajos, until lately, occupied a fine tract of country watered by the Colorado, Chiquito, and San Juan rivers and their tributaries, as well as by some of the western branches of the Rio Grande. They were bounded on the north by the Utah nation, on the south by the Apaches, on the west by the Moqui and Zuñi pueblos, and on the east by the inhabitants of the Rio Grande valley. Although often placed under the head of Apaches, they are in every respect a different and a finer race. They are bold and defiant, with full lustrous eyes, and a sharp, intelligent expression of countenance; they had fixed abodes in their country, around which they raised crops almost rivalling those of the Pimas on the Gila: they carried one art—the weaving of blankets—to a state of perfection which, in closeness of texture and arrangement of colour, is scarcely excelled even by the laboured and costly seraphes of Mexico and South America. I tried at Santa Fé to purchase some, but the prices were so enormous, averaging from seventy to one hundred dollars for choice specimens, that I refrained. For love of plunder and rapine, these Indians have no equals. Their number, twenty years ago, was probably about twelve thousand, and while they left their wives and old men to plant, reap, attend to the stock, and make blankets, the braves spent their lives in traversing the whole country, carrying off the stock of the helpless Mexican farmers, and keeping the entire agricultural and mining population in a constant state of alarm. To give a slight idea of the depredations of these hordes, I may state that between August 1, 1846, and October 1, 1850, there were stolen by them, according to the report of the United States Marshals, no less than twelve thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven mules, seven thousand and fifty horses, thirty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-one horned cattle, and four hundred and fifty-three thousand two hundred and ninety-three head of sheep. The official reports from New Mexico appeared to contain nothing but catalogues of depredations committed by the Navajos, or of similar deeds done by the Apaches; and not only was the valley of the Rio Grande swept over and over again of its stock, but the Pueblo Indians of Zuñi, and many other native towns, barely escaped destruction.

Governor Charles Bent thus spoke of them in 1846: "The Navajos are an industrious, intelligent, and warlike race of Indians, who cultivate the soil, and raise sufficient grain and fruits of various kinds for their own consumption. They are the owners of large herds and flocks of cattle,