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Convinced, from what the agent told me, that I should act without unnecessary delay, I proposed that we should start for Jemez at once, but he declared himself too much fatigued by a long journey to undertake a night ride of twenty-six miles.
As you go into the Pecos Forests to play, so you go into the Jemez to dream. You go to Pecos to hunt and fish. So you do to the Jemez; but it is historic fact you are hunting and a reconstruction of the record of man you are fishing for. The School has been a going concern for only a few years. Yet last year over 150 scientists came in from every quarter of the globe.
We passed through an interesting country, filled with wind-carven pillars and minarets, eroded shelves and caverns, and lunched at noonday beside a dozen boiling sulphur springs. We also passed Cañoncito, the little village which was the home of José Cordova. As we came in sight of the tinned spires of the church at Jemez, we heard a distinct murmur, and halted at once.
The white race were upon them in Mexico and New Mexico a hundred years earlier than upon the Indian tribes of the United States. But, as if to stimulate investigation into their ancient mode of life, some of these tribes have continued through all these years to live in the same identical houses occupied by their forefathers in 1540 at Acoma, Jemez, and Taos.
That evening, by the light of a brilliant moon, the dead Navajos were buried upon a hill-top overlooking the town, amid the wailing of their women and much ceremonious demonstration by the Jemez people, and Frank and I retired for the night to the house of the hospitable priest.
During the winter our supply of grain ran short, and I sent a party, with the Cordovas as guides, to Jemez. They were unable to get through the snow, and the elder Cordova was so badly frost-bitten that in spite of all we could do he died in the camp. Then I went with a larger party, and was successful.
Coronado's intention was to cross the Rio Grande at Peña Blanca, skirt the southern edge of the Jemez Mountains, reach San Isidoro, and then march northward toward the San Juan region. The wagons were well fitted out with mules, and as Garcia had not chosen to send much merchandise by this risky route, they were light, so that the rate of progress was unusually rapid.
The inaccessibility of the Rito may be in harmony with its ancient character; but that same inaccessibility drives thousands of tourists to Egypt instead of the Jemez Forests. There are other things to do in the Cañon besides explore the City of the Dead. Wander down the bed of the stream. You are passing through parks of stately yellow pine, and flowers which no botanist has yet classified.
The faint rose hue of early dawn was touching the highest peaks of the Sandia and Jemez mountain ranges, while the valley of the Rio Grande still lay asleep under dull night shadows, when five ponies and their riders left the door of San Miguel church and rode southward in the slowly paling gloom.
There are pictures, too, of the caravans crossing the plains, of the coming of American occupation, of the Moki and Hopi and Zuñi pueblos, of the Missions of which only ruins to-day mark the sites in the Jemez, at Sandia, and away out in the Desert of Abo. To the left of the reception room is an excellent art gallery of Southwestern subjects.
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