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Updated: May 22, 2025
The sunken lane, which had a wire fence on either side, led straight up toward, and between, the two hills in our front, the hill on the left, which contained heavy block-houses, being farther away from us than the hill on our right, which we afterward grew to call Kettle Hill, and which was surmounted merely by some large ranch buildings or haciendas, with sunken brick-lined walls and cellars.
Moreover, the Apaches have been a continual source of dread and danger. This state of affairs is, however, now passing away. There were evidences of a recent Mexican occupation, with the ruins of towns, missions, presidios, haciendas, and ranches. There were evidences of former Spanish civilization, with extensive workings in mines.
A savings bank system is maintained, strict sanitation is insisted upon in the houses furnished by the company, and the methods of the haciendas of the region, of paying the peon the lowest possible wages for his labor and produce and selling to him at the highest possible prices at the estate store, thereby keeping him in constant debt and a species of slavery, are avoided.
There were stories, as they ate, of the old times, of the wars and revolutions of Sonora, wherein the Señor Moreno had taken too brave a part, as his wounds and exile showed; strange tales of wonders and miracles wrought by the Indian doctors of Altár; of sacred snakes with the sign of the cross blazoned in gold on their foreheads, worshipped by the Indians with offerings of milk and tender chickens; of primitive life on the haciendas of Sonora, where men served their masters for life and were rewarded at the end with a pension of beans and carne seco.
There were scores of stout men acting as lieutenants, captains, majors, etc., of slight performance in those capacities, but who, had they been formed into companies, and asked to fight now one night, at this desperate juncture, for the haciendas General Walker had promised them, would have done willing, perhaps, and excellent service.
To those who reflected, both forms of the rumour were incomprehensible. Why should "Indios bravos" attack the Presidio before proceeding against the more defenceless town as well as the several rich haciendas? And how could Carlos the cibolero be their leader? Why should he of all men, he who had just suffered at the hands of the savages?
But first it was necessary to achieve our horses before we could mount; and to that end we were permitted, and indeed commanded, by General Walker, President of Nicaragua, to search the surrounding haciendas and stables, until we were satisfactorily provided.
Continual wars and revolutions, utter insecurity of life and property, the Indians burning down the haciendas in the South and turning out the white people, the roads on the plains impassable on account of deserters and robbers; sometimes no practical government at all, then two or three at once, who raise armies and fight a little sometimes, but generally confine themselves to plundering the peaceable inhabitants.
We stopped at San Miguel, another of the haciendas of the Company, where the German barrel-process is worked. Just behind the hacienda is the Ojo de Agua the Eye of Water a beautiful basin, surrounded by a green sward and a wood of oaks and fir-trees.
I was myself shown the house in Los Angeles where the story was written, and so strong is the local impression that I confess to looking at the rose-embowered cottage with a good deal of interest, though I had seen the romance growing day by day in the Berkeley in New York. It is almost the only one remaining of the old-fashioned Spanish haciendas, where the old administration prevails.
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