152 IN THE OLD WEST 



A Taos Indian, who was amongst the band, was 

 evidently impressed with a melancholy awe as he 

 regarded these ancient monuments of his fallen 

 people. At midnight he rose from his blanket 

 and left the camp, which was in the vicinity of the 

 ruined city, stealthily picking his way through 

 the line of slumbering forms which lay around; 

 and the watchful sentinel observed him approach 

 the ruins with a slow and reverential gait. En- 

 tering the moldering walls, he gazed silently 

 around, where in ages past his ancestors trod 

 proudly, a civilized race, the tradition of which, 

 well known to his people, served but to make their 

 present degraded position more galling and ap- 

 parent. Cowering under the shadow of a crum- 

 bling wall, the Indian drew his blanket over his 

 head, and conjured to his mind's eye the former 

 power and grandeur of his race that warlike 

 people who, forsaking their own country for 

 causes of which no tradition, however dim, now 

 exists, sought in the fruitful and teeming valleys 

 of the south a soil and climate which their own 

 lands did not afford, and, displacing the wild 

 and barbarous hordes inhabiting the land, raised 

 there a mighty empire, great in riches and civiliza- 

 tion. 



The Indian bowed his head, and mourned the 



but that the region extending from the Gila to the Great 

 Salt Lake, and embracing the province of New Mexico, was 

 the locality from which they emigrated. 



