Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
We had intended stopping here for the night; but the cabildo was already filled with a motley crowd of arrieros and others on their way to San Miguel. A tall mestizo, covered with ulcers, sat in the doorway, and two or three culprits extended their claw-like hands towards us through the bars of their cage and invoked alms in the name of the Virgin and all things sacred.
The men scarcely ever occupy themselves in husbandry, which they abandon to the women, who plough the flinty fields and gather in the scanty harvests. Their husbands and sons are far differently employed: for they are a nation of arrieros or carriers, and almost esteem it a disgrace to follow any other profession.
Here one may buy mats, ropes, pack-saddles which the arrieros delight to have ornamented with fanciful designs and inscriptions, lazos, and many other things of the same kind. Passing out through the city-gate, we ride along a straight causeway, which extends to Guadalupe.
Our conscientious and hard-working arrieros rose at two o'clock the next morning, for they knew their mules had a long, hard climb ahead of them, from an elevation of 1000 feet above sea level to 10,000 feet. After an all-day journey we camped at a place where forage could be obtained. We had now left the region of tropical products and come back to potatoes and barley.
Notwithstanding the heat of the weather, I rode about in all directions. It was well that heat agrees with my constitution, otherwise it would have been impossible to effect anything in this season, when the very arrieros frequently fall dead from their mules, smitten by sun-stroke.
Nature has done everything; it is graceless man who is in fault that all is not in accordance with it. At the corner of one of the streets we saw a number of horses, and mules, and donkeys, standing together with their attendant drivers arrieros. "Wouldn't you like a ride, Mr Brand?" exclaimed Gerard, looking towards them.
"`What was the ghost like? I asked; so he told me that it was a fearful creature a mulish-looking sort of man, who was in the habit of terrifying the arrieros and peons who passed that way, but he said they were going to get a priest to put a cross up there, and so lay the ghost. "`Meanwhile, I said, `the ten travellers are to be left to starve?
I've been talking to some of the miners and arrieros, and the thing is foolhardy and dangerous." Then, seeing the expression on my face, he continued hastily: "Oh, not for myself. You know me; I'll do anything that any one else will do, and more, if I can. But Desiree! I tell you, if anything happened to her I well " I cut him short: "My dear boy, the idea is Desiree's own.
A signal was given; and shortly after the mules, in charge of the arrieros, came stringing across the plain. "Collect all the dry meat that can be found. Let it be packed as speedily as possible." In front of most of the houses there were strings of tasajo hanging against the walls.
We all wished to find a better route than the Santa Fe road; and we expected that such an one lay between the town of El Paso on the Del Norte River and some point on the frontiers of Arkansas. On arriving at El Paso, we sold our wagons, and purchased Mexican pack-mules engaging, at the same time, a number of "arrieros," or muleteers to manage them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking