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Updated: June 22, 2025
With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from capture.
That was why, of course, within a week from this Jeff received the first big packet of stuff from the Cuban Land Development Company, with coloured pictures of Cuba, and fields of bananas, and haciendas and insurrectos with machetes and Heaven knows what. They heard of him, somehow, it wasn't for a modest man like Jefferson to say how.
We galloped down the broad and almost level highway which passes between Rivas and San Jorge, bordered a great part of its length, on either side, by cactus-hedges, broken at various intervals by the grassy by-lanes that run out to the neighboring haciendas or parallel roads.
Furious at this misfortune, the general in command put his cavalry in motion, and scoured the country; only to find, however, that the whole of the haciendas of the Spanish proprietors were in flames, and that fire had been applied to all the standing crops.
"Go at once," he decided without a moment's hesitation. "My dear cousin, it will be the happy turning point of your fortunes. I fancy you already inheriting the hoards, city lots, haciendas, mines, and cattle of our excellent relative Muñoz long may he live to enjoy them! Certainly. Don't whisper an objection. Muñoz owes you that reparation.
Beyond this they came upon many cotton plantations, and in the ravines by the side of the valley or among the ruins of Indian towns were several large fortresses. They also passed the remains of an old Spanish town and several haciendas, where many cattle and horses were grazing.
It had shifted them upon the whole extent of the immense Campo, with the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls dominating the green distances; with its grass-thatched ranches crouching in the folds of ground by the banks of streams; with the dark islands of clustered trees on a clear sea of grass, and the precipitous range of the Cordillera, immense and motionless, emerging from the billows of the lower forests like the barren coast of a land of giants.
Those who lived in the scattered ranchos forsook their homes during the night, and betook themselves to the town and the larger haciendas for shelter. These last were shut up as soon as darkness approached, and regular sentries posted upon their azoteas, who kept watch until morning.
After crossing the dividing ridge of the continent west of the Rio Grande, Gray thus alludes to the country: "There were large haciendas and fine cattle ranches in this neighborhood, until a war of extermination was declared by the Apaches against the Mexicans.
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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