24 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
Indian hostilities to a climax. Mangas Coloradas, who was ) 
the greatest chief in the whole country, was induced to enter 
a military post, now abolished—Fort M‘Lane, twenty miles 
west of the Rio Miembres—on the plea of making a treaty 
and receiving presents. The soldiers, however, imprisoned 
him in a hut, and the sentry shot him at night, on the excus 
that he feared he would escape. This act roused the who 
Apache tribe to vengeance. The Miembres Apaches, tk 
especial band of the massacred chief, spread themselves fz 
and near all over the country, and every white man they coul 
find was doomed to fall by their silent arrows. | 
Cooke’s Caiion, then traversed almost daily, was one 0 
their favourite spots, and it is said that as many as fow! 
hundred emigrants, soldiers and Mexicans, have lost thei 
lives in that short four-mile gorge. I have conversed with 
settler who has counted nine skeletons while passing throug 3 
the cafion, and the graves and heaps of stones which now 
fringe the road will long bear record of those dreadful times 
The breaking out of tle civil war caused the withdrawal ¢ 
many troops who garrisoned the collections of mud huts 
dignified by the name of forts, which were scattered up and 
down the country; so that the miners were left at the mercy 
of the red men; travel was completely stopped; the brighg 
spark of eoleeinine which had just burst into flame wad 
the second time since the discovery of the country, actual 
snuffed out ; the mines and machinery were abandoned ; 
villages left 3 in ruins; and thus the land relapsed once mol 
into its original Solitada, ; 
Again the wave is turning in favour of the white man am 
settlement. Fort Cummings, a charming little fort enclosed i 
a Square palisade, now protects Cooke’s Cafion. Fort Bayard 
ituated almost oo between Pinos Altos, Santa R 
