The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1880-08-12
RambIes In New Mexico.

highly embellished with yellow sash
tied tightly around his waist, securing q
long knife (nacaga) in it's folds. Every
! Spanlard can use the knife with skill
and In his hands it becomes dreadful
weapon. He can cast it with exact aim
and unerring certainty into post or
into the heart of an enemy, at consid-
cradle distance away, and wherever
there is Spanish blood the naraga is the
favorite weapon, not always concealed
about his person. Our nnlleteer took
his pleasure sadly as any Englishman
but his sadness is only for strangers.
lie is leader of the band which goes
from house to house playing under the
windows-the sweet Spanish invitation
to the ball; gayly .thrums the guitar at
the light fandango; and can dance till
morning, as well as hold his own in any
affray that may grow out of the wild
license of the bale. $50, f. ~
Occasionally he leaped from his seat
for pocketful of stones, gathering
them as the wagon moved on and throw
ing them at the heads of the mules: at
the same time muttering, on the ledger
lines below, sacred words mixed with
names OF saints. The Mexican insists a
mule cannot be made to understand
without such urging and they have q
proyerb: -. An ass ears are made long
in order to catch oaths.''
N B.-There is no reason to believe
that a like superstition attaches to the
Army of the United States.
Leaving the venera bic city of the Pueb-
los we crossed the Santa Fe River.
which in Indiana would be called a
spring branch. l have often gone over
1t dry shod. But the poverty of the
Spanish language allows only one word
for running water-Rio, translated river.
The Santa Fe Mountains round about us
are part OF the great Rocky Mountain
system, connecting on the north with
the Spanish Peaks and Ration Mountains,
including many whose SUBMITS are sill
vered with perpetual snow. A series
OF high, picturesque chains, in the
morningglow robed with transparent
purple haze, of such exquisite tint one
can hardly realize those airy pyramids
in a fair borderland between us and
heaven are, indeed, upheavals of earth,
veined with quartz and based on coarse
red granite. 80 lafsA3i fs.3]
Words cannot picture aught so fair.
The fainteSt violet, the softest hello
trope are coarse and hard beside the
dreamy, poetic color, which appeals to
the eye as dim aolian sounding touch
the ear, charming the fancy with vague
ideas of a viewless beauty within the
floating veil.
cannot make you understand. Come
and see the TRANSPORTATION which makes
rock-ribbed hills appear like tents of
light, lovely enough for angels to rest in
ON their upward flight "a. s.5-.
The plain was smooth as prairie
and our road free of stons. The reader
must not imagine it lay among the Al
pine scenery, with huge peaks tower
ing to the sky. forbidding our advance,
yielding at last to reveal smiling valleys
and hidden hamlets, nesting close to
the hillsides i'll narrow gIens. Here all
IS on the same magnificent scale. The
plains are broad as the SUBMITS are
high; the refined atmosphere so intense
~ clear the light is like reflection
from snow. No such extensive views
are had in Europe or any country where
the air holds moisture and sometimes
the landscapes seem absolutely limit
less.
The Sierras are short, uneven spurs
from the main line. They have dis i
turbed the everything strata in the shape
OF naesas (tables) Of solid rock, which
are distinguishing feature of Rocky
Mountain scenery, giving it grotesque
fantastic beauty. The process of erosion
has formed in colossal size copies of the
grandest structures of mans art and
towering columns, temples with sharp
pinnacles, scattered pillars rise alb
ruptly from the center of plains DESC
late and forsaken as the wilderness of
Engedei-strange- and solemn sights.
In the Painted Desert are snow-White
mesGs, the craze blanche composition of
the chalk cliffs ON the south coast of
England, which dazzle the eye, reflect
ing the sunlight like palaces of alabas-
ter or of ice. I. The stone corridors of
karnuk and Philac are the work of pig
mics compared with this noble architect
wrought by slow processes in secret
places.
" Made by Nature for herself'
Sometimes the mesa shapes into
roSe-Teu wall, with. nuted columns that
uphold the sky. Again it is a group of
gray pyramids, a thousand or twelve
hundred feet high; or an isolated, bro
ken dome, worn smooth by the wealth
er. picturesque in the extreme.
Nothing affords such changes of col
oring as the varieg gated marls, lying in
regular bands of red, orange, green
blue, of rainbow hue, striped and in
terstratified with belts of purple, blush
white and mottled veins of exceeding
richness.
Strangely enough, the traveller occa-
,ionally finds himself riding above these
singular formations and looking down
On the GO Painted Rocks"
The sheer sides of mesa of gray
mixed with blue clay and
capped with a rim of pillared basalt.
IRE singularly like fabrics Of hewn stone.
have seen low walls of even heigh,
.eaching long distances, precisely like
ield-walls laid by skillful masons.
These, in the neighborhood of stately |
facddes, with the fair finish at the TOP.
explain how an explorer, afraid to make
lear approach, should go away and