ORIENTAL RESEMBLANCES IN NEW MEXICO. 603 
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direct offspring, at least the kindred of the civilization of the Egypt of four 
thousand years ago. The character of many of the ancient ruins from Zuni to 
Palenque and Copan, the type of heads and features sculptured thereon, the 
pottery of the Pueblos and Navajos—all, if not exactly resembling those of an- 
cient Egypt, resemble nothing else in the world so much. The wooden plow 
used by the Indians of this Territory to-day is of the exact type found sculptured 
upon monuments that were old before the walls of Troy were built. The char- 
acter of the country and climate considerably heightens these resemblances. 
Standing near one of these Indian pueblos and reading a page of Bayard Taylor’s 
journey up the Nile, you might easily fancy as you looked around that the great 
traveler was describing the scene before you. The rude houses of sun-baked 
mud with occasional bits of vineyard about them; in the back-ground the barren 
flats or the low yellow sandhills; in front the broad river, its turbid waters changed 
to gleaming silver by the slanting rays of the blazing sun; and over all the pale, 
hot, quiet, cloudless sky. The dusky inhabitants in their scanty white cotton 
garments moving languidly about, the asses plodding afield or standing with 
mournfully drooping heads, and the rude, antique-looking implements seen here 
and there, harmonize well with the rest of this picture of ancient Egypt, as it 
were. 
I have said that Spanish New Mexico bears tokens of the influence of the 
Arabian civilization, and it may not be clear at first sight how it can be so. It 
will be remembered that the immediate successors of the great Arab prophet 
carried their conquering arms and fanatic faith, not only to the walls of Vienna 
on the north, but along the whole southern coast of the Mediterranean, then 
swarmed up into Spain, crossed the Pyrenees and overran half of France. Though 
the mace of Charles Martel crushed their front at Poitiers and the swords of the 
Paladins scourged them back across the mountains, they held possession of more 
or less of Spain for nearly eight hundred years. Not only did this long domin- 
ion of so energetic a race deeply impress Spanish customs and architecture, and 
mingle, no doubt, much of its blood with the Spanish race, but when the last king 
of the Spanish Moors yielded the keys of his capital to the consort sovereigns of 
Aragon and Castile and bade adieu forever to the Alhambra’s marble halls, many 
thousands of the Moors remained behind to still further impress their characteris- 
tics upon Spain. When they were finally expelled eighty years later by the foolish 
bigotry of Philip II Spain lost in them her most substantial citizens-her most skillful 
mechanics and enterprising traders. But, even thus, it is estimated that there are 
60,000 A/orescos, or persons of Moorish descent, in Spain. It is highly probable 
that so fine an opportunity for adventure as was opened by the discovery of the 
New World was embraced by thousands of an adventurous race whose ancestors 
carried their banners over two thousand leagues of conquest in Europe and Africa, 
and it is not unlikely that many of these AZorescos were in the vanguard of the 
Conquistadores. 
Santa Fe, except in its new American features, is a type of the remote, half- 
