370 THE TABLE-LAND. Book II. 
fully. At last, with his band, he fell into an ambush laid 
for him by some Mexican troops, and all were destroyed. 
This Indian lived with a Mexican girl whom he had stolen 
from her parents 5 house. She took part in the light with 
these troops just like an Indian woman. Her country 
people called to her that she was recognised, and that she 
had nothing to fear if she would surrender. But she 
rejected the proposition and fell with the last of the band, 
having previously killed several soldiers with her arrows. 
On a later journey through the continent, I was told a 
similar circumstance by an inhabitant of Mesilla (on the 
Rio Grande) whose niece had been stolen by an Apache 
band, and now lived willingly with them. This man had 
met her at Santa Barbara with the chief of the Copper- 
mine Apaches, then at peace with the North Americans, 
who assured him that there was no obstacle to the girl's 
return to her friends ; but the girl rejected the proposi- 
tion with disgust, and, when her uncle eagerly persuaded 
her, refused to speak to him. " Y era muchacha cristiana !" 
" and that was a christian girl !" adding indignantly as he 
told me the tale, " pero indiada, apachada !" " but turned 
Indian, turned Apache!" - 
We continued our journey the next day. The road up 
the side of the plateau is very steep. When we reached 
the plain we saw the village in the midst of its green corn- 
fields far beneath our feet. On the other side of the valley 
the eye followed the horizontal line of the opposite plateau, 
above which isolated mountain groups raised their bare 
rocky peaks against the dark blue sky. 
On the plain our road lay in a north-westerly direction, 
rising higher and higher for ten or twelve miles. The 
plateau here is a sloping plain. Before us rose two conical 
mountains like a double island on the horizon. The road 
