Page:Memoir of a tour to northern Mexico.djvu/25

Rh lime for whitewashing, and the crystalline or selenite instead of window glass. About four days travelling (probably 100 miles) south-southeast of Santa Fe, on the high table land between the Rio del Norte and Pecos are some extensive salt lakes, or "salinas," from which all the salt (muriate of soda) used in New Mexico is procured. Large caravans go thereof every year from Santa Fe in the dry season, and return with as much as they can transport. They exchange, generally, one bushel of salt for one Indian corn, or sell it for one and even two dollars a bushel.

Not far from these salinas the ruins of an old city are found, of the fabulous "la Gran Quvira." The common report in relation to this place is, that a very large and wealthy city was once here situated, with very rich mines, the produce of which was once or twice a year sent to Spain. At one season, when they were making extraordinary preparations for transporting the precious metals, the Indians attacked them; whereupon the miners buried their treasures, worth 50 millions, and left the city together; but they were all killed except two, who went to Mexico, giving the particulars of the affair and soliciting aid to return. But the distance being so great and the Indians so numerous, nobody would advance, and the thing was dropped. One of the two went to New Orleans, then under the dominion of Spain, raised 500 men and started by way of the Sabine, but was never heard of afterwards. So far the report. Within the last few years several Americans and Frenchmen have visited the place; and, although they have not found the treasure, they certify at least to the existence of an aqueduct, about 10 miles in length, to the still standing walls of several churches, the sculptures of the Spanish coat of arms, and to many spacious pits, supposed to be silver mines. It was no doubt a Spanish mining town, and it is not unlikely that it was destroyed in 1680, in the general, successful insurrection of the Indians in New Mexico against the Spaniards. Dr. Samuel G. Morton, in a late pamphlet, suggests the probability that it was originally an old Indian city, into which the Spaniards, as in several other instances, had intruded themselves, and subsequently abandoned it. Further investigation, it is to be hoped, will clear up this point.

The climate of New Mexico is of course very different in the higher, mountainous parts, from the lower valley of the Rio del Norte; but generally taken, it is temperate, constant, and healthy. The summer heat in the valley of the river will sometimes rise to nearly 100° Fahrenheit, but the nights are always cool and pleasant. The winters are much longer and more severe than in Chihuahua, the higher mountains are always covered with snow, and ice and snow are common in Santa Fe; but the Rio del Norte is never frozen with ice thick enough to admit the passage of horses and carriages, as was formerly believed. The sky is generally clear, and the atmosphere dry. Between July and October, rains fall; but the rainy seasons are here not so constant and regular as in the southern States. Disease seems to be very little known, except some inflammations and typhoidal fevers in the winter season.

The history of New Mexico lies very much in the dark. The Spaniards, it seems, received the first information about it in 1581 from a party of adventurers under Captain Francisco de Levya Bonillo, who, upon finding the aboriginal inhabitants and the mineral wealth of the country to be similar to those of Mexico, called it New Mexico. In 1594, the then