United States or Zimbabwe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Santa Fe is the entrepot of the province, and the chief seat of its trade. On reaching it we halted, camping without the walls. Saint Vrain, several other proprietaires, and myself, took up our quarters at the Fonda, where we endeavoured, by means of the sparkling vintage of El Paso, to make ourselves oblivious of the hardships we had endured in the passage of the plains.
"Is it not consuming terrible to be so shaken?... Yet I never gain my desire, for there in my path my own self rises to confront me, blocking my way. And I can never pass never.... Once, in winter, our agent, Mr. Fonda, came driving a trained caribou to a sledge. A sweet, gentle thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it mad, cousin!
But we reckoned without the ideal of the girl with the yellow flower in her hair: in the little saloon, shining round with glazed tiles where we next found ourselves, the sun had been carefully screened and scarcely pierced the scrim shades. But this was the worst, this was all that was bad, in that fonda.
They arrived very wet and shivering, and all seemed very disconsolate, especially the father, who was a well-looking middle-aged man. "Can we be accommodated?" he demanded in a gentle voice of the man of the house; "can we be accommodated in this fonda?" "Certainly, your worship," replied the other; "our house is large. How many apartments does your worship require for your family?"
He further interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch.
Did a trader protest, or hold back, he was promptly clapped in irons. It was cheaper to pay the duty than buy a release. The walls of both the Fonda and the Gareta were of tremendous thickness, four to six feet of solid adobe, which was hard as our modern cement. In the walls behind the Gareta and on the walls behind the Palace, pitted bullet holes have been found.
All day we rode on through the valley, now far up on the hill-sides, now down by the meadows; past Palatine Church, Palatine Bridge; through Fonda and Amsterdam to Schenectady. It was a glorious ride. The road winds along the side of the valley, following the graceful curves and swellings of the hills.
''If you will accompany us to the Fonda Genovesa, Caballero, said Pedro, 'I will warrant you will have no cause to repent it. ''I am infinitely indebted to you, and shall gladly accept your guidance. 'The Fonda Genovesa was certainly one of the vilest establishments I ever visited, and the dinner was, of course, detestably bad.
There is no noise of traffic; the one narrow street echoes to our tramping feet as I follow my charming cicerone, who has started up for me like some good spirit of a fairy-tale. She leads me to an inn, bids me enter, and flies in search of the owner of the shallop. The landlord comes to greet me, and I recognise in him an acquaintance Maurice, a former waiter in the Fonda de Paris, in Madrid.
The guide was Manoel Reyes, who has already appeared in the 'Specialities of a Residence Above the Clouds. He is a small, wizen-faced man, quiet, self-contained, and fond exceedingly fond of having his own way. By dint of hard work we left the Fonda Gobea at 9 A.M. on March 23, with loud cries of 'Mulo! and 'Anda, caballo! and 'So-o-o! when the bat-beasts indulged in a free fight.
Word Of The Day