all was darkness.

Had he kept his footing on the other side of the chasm, he would have
been safe, for a bold deed always commands admiration from the savage,
and at that time they would have scorned to use their arrows.

Such was the fate of Colonel Overton!




CHAPTER XIII.


At last we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to
Santa Fé. Much hath been written about this rich and romantic city,
where formerly, if we were to believe travellers, dollars and doubloons
were to be had merely for picking them up; but I suspect the writers had
never seen the place, for it is a miserable, dirty little hole,
containing about three thousand souls, almost all of them half-bred,
naked, and starved. Such is Santa Fé. You will there witness spectacles
of wretchedness and vice hardly to be found elsewhere--harsh despotism;
immorality carried to its highest degree, with drunkenness and filth.

The value of the Santa Fé trade has been very much exaggerated. This
town was formerly the readiest point to which goods could be brought
overland from the States to Mexico; but since the colonization of Texas
it is otherwise. The profits also obtained in this trade are far from
being what they used to be. The journey from St. Louis (Missouri) is
very tedious, the distance being about twelve hundred miles, nor is the