Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/435

Rh house, the custom house, barracks, calabozo, casa consistorial, the military chapel, besides several private residences, as well as most of the shops of the American traders.

is a town as large as Santa Fé, stretched for several miles along the left bank of the Rio Grande, and if not a handsomer, is at least not a worse looking place than the capital.

The population of New Mexico, owing to the insecure tenure of life on a frontier which is constantly liable to the ravages of wild Indians, has always clustered together in towns and villages. These are scattered along the valley of the rivers, and are commonly known as the "rio arriva" and "rio abajo" or "up stream" and "down stream" settlements. Even individual ranchos and haciendas serve as the nucleii of large neighborhoods, and finally become important villages. All the principal locations of this character lie in the valley between one hundred miles north and one hundred and forty south of the capital. The most important of these next to the capital, is, whose name is derived from the Taosa tribe, a remnant of which still forms a Pueblo in the north of the district. No part of New Mexico equals this spot in productiveness; and although the bottom lands of the valleys where irrigation may be easily obtained have often produced over a hundred fold, yet the