296 ANTON CHICO. Book II. 
who can assert his rights will always be treated by the 
Anglo-Americans with consideration ; but woe to the weak 
who are unable to defend themselves ! The general con- 
sent of public opinion in the United States, adjudges the 
rights of man to him only who has the power to assert 
them. Whatever laudable qualities the Anglo-American 
may possess, he wants one of the essential graces of man 
— generosity of the strong toward the weak ; — no observant 
person can regard the gallantry shown to ladies in the 
United States in this light, inasmuch as, if for no other 
reason, the female sex has here assumed the position of 
the stronger part, on account of the smaller number in 
which it exists at the beginning in every colony. 
Anton Chico is a small place of wretched appearance 
resembling Las Yegas ; but which has a still more death- 
like aspect from its distance from the high-road. The 
stony heights of the surrounding country, dotted here and 
there with single juniper-bushes, impart to it a desolate 
and gloomy character ; and the dilapidated mud-walls, 
against which, wrapt in his old shabby serape, a man is 
occasionally seen leaning, to thaw his stiffened limbs in 
the sun, with groups of women and children seated on 
the ground, all present a concentrated picture of North 
Mexican misery. 
Half a mile below this spot, our caravan crossed the 
Pecos, a small muddy river, on the other side of which 
the road ascends from the sandstone soil of the valley to a 
flat limestone hill, upon which we found a little rain-water 
in the hollows of the rocks. Pines, juniper-trees, and 
dwarf-oaks, covered the country in a park-like appear- 
ance. Stretching toward W.N.W., a dry rocky valley, 
called the Canon Blanco, or White Defile, passes from 
the Pecos Valley through the plateau of white sandstone 
