Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/34

 Pecos, in the extreme southwestern corner of the State of Texas, more than twenty years ago. Various conjectures were advanced and all sorts of theories advocated as to its exact age, some people thinking that it belonged originally to Coronado's expedition, which entered New Mexico in 1541. My personal belief is that it belonged to the expedition of Don Antonio Espejo, or that of Don Juan de Oñate, both of whom came into New Mexico about the same date—1581-1592—and travelled down the Concho to its confluence with the Rio Grande, which would have been just on the line where the skeleton in armor was discovered. There is no authentic report to show that Coronado swung so far to the south; his line of operations took in the country farther to the north and east, and there are the best of reasons for believing that he was the first white man to enter the fertile valley of the Platte, not far from Plum Creek, Nebraska.

But, be that as it may, the suit of armor—breast and back plates, gorget and helmet—nicely painted and varnished, and with every tiny brass button duly cleaned and polished with acid and ashes, added not a little to the looks of a den which without them would have been much more dismal.

For such of my readers as may not be up in these matters, I may say that iron armor was abandoned very soon after the Conquest, as the Spaniards found the heat of these dry regions too great to admit of their wearing anything so heavy; and they also found that the light cotton-batting "escaupiles" of the Aztecs served every purpose as a protection against the arrows of the naked savages by whom they were now surrounded.

There was not much to do in the post itself, although there was a sufficiency of good, healthy exercise to be counted upon at all times outside of it. I may be pardoned for dwelling upon trivial matters such as were those entering into the sum total of our lives in the post, but, under the hope that it and all in the remotest degree like it have disappeared from the face of the earth never to return, I will say a few words.

In the first place, Camp Grant was a hot-bed of the worst kind of fever and ague, the disease which made many portions of Southern Arizona almost uninhabitable during the summer and fall months of the year. There was nothing whatever to do except scout after hostile Apaches, who were very bold and kept