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The western edge of this plateau is known as the Nacimiento Mountain, a long north-and-south range of granite, which presents a bold facade to the valley of the Puerco on the west. Ascending to the summit of this granite range, there is presented to the eastward a plateau of vast proportions, which stretches far toward Santa Fe and is terminated by the canyon of the Rio Grande del Norte.
The most effective work against them was done by a band of about a hundred Seminole-negro half-breeds, to whom the Government had made a grant of four square leagues twenty-five miles west of Musquiz, on the Nacimiento.
Come originally out of the Indian territory in the United States, where the Seminoles had cross-bred with their negro slaves, this same band a few years earlier had been most efficient scouts for our own troops at Fort dark, and other border garrisons, and it was this record that led the Mexican Government to seek and lodge them on the Nacimiento, as a buffer against the Lipans.
But for this we had no time; and after a short visit for which the congregation adjourned service we filled our canteens, let our horses drink their fill at the great Nacimiento spring that burst forth a veritable young river from beneath a low bluff beside the town, and struck out westward for Alamo Cañon.
It was dark before we finished the examination of these quaint and interesting old buildings, and we were glad enough to go to the house of the secretario, where we found good beds and elaborate furniture. In the room where we were to sleep there was a nacimiento, made in connection with the Christmas season.
'To-morrow is Friday, added Monsieur Letellier, 'and that is so near Monday, what can Madame do better than wait here till then? By way of consolation, he informed us that there were no Indians now at Angol, as the Araucanian Indians had recently all been driven further back from the frontier by the Chilenos, but that, if we were still bent on trying to get there, we could go by boat as far as Nacimiento, where we might, with some difficulty, procure a carriage.
Crossing the mountains to the east, they followed Nacimiento Creek to below Paso Robles, then went down the dusty valley of the Salinas, past the pastures on which the missions of San Miguel and Soledad were later planted. Below Soledad, they came again to the sea.
So early the next morning we marched out westward, passing the last house a half-mile outside the centre of the town, along a dim, little-travelled trail that followed the river to the Seminole village on the Nacimiento.
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