114 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 



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. 

 Entering the mouldering walls, he gazed silently around, 

 where in ages past his ancestors trod proudly, a civilised 

 race, the tradition of which, well known to his people, 

 served but to make their present degraded position more 

 galling and apparent. Cowering under the shadow of 

 a crumbling 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 

 civilisation. 



The Indian bowed his head, and mourned the fallen 

 greatness of his tribe. Eising, he slowly drew his 

 tattered blanket round his body, and prepared to leave 

 the spot, when the shadow of a moving figure, creeping 

 past a gap in the ruined wall, through which the moon- 

 beams played, suddenly arrested his attention. Rigid 

 as a statue, he stood transfixed to the spot, thinking a 

 former inhabitant of the city was visiting, in a ghostly 

 form, the scenes his body once knew so well. The bow 

 in his right hand shook with fear as he saw the shadow 

 approach, but was as tightly and steadily grasped when, 

 on the figure emerging from the shade of the wall, he 



