12 
STRANGE LANDS AT HOME— 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
ODD SPOTS WE KNOW NOT OF 
Strange Customs, People and Ways, in the Heart of Our 
Civilization, of which we Know Little. 
[By M. J. Brown, Editor Little Valley (N. Y.) Hub.] 
Seventeen miles outside of Santa 
Fe I ran onto an attraction which 
interested me, as it will easterners, 
A turquoise mine, owned now by Tif- 
fany & Co., the New York jewelers 
This mine’s history goes back so tar 
it has dry rot. They say when the 
Spaniards first came here turquoise 
were as plenty as beans with the In. 
dians, but where they got then they 
would not tell and Spaniards could 
not find out. 
Today the mine is closed the most 
of the time, effectually and vigilant- 
ly closed, not only with a lock that 
would defy a New York yegg man, 
but a patrol is made night and day. 
They tell the story here that Tiffany, 
not wishing to glut the market on 
these stones, only takes out a few 
of them each year, and as these 
mines are scarce, he has a combina- 
tion in restraint of competition that 
has the shoe trust in the a. b. ¢. rew. 
Tiffany was also one of the get-in- 
early fellows over in the petrified 
forests, when vandalism went, and 
they say out here that he has logs 
enough of topaz, moss agate, and 
amethyst stored away to run old 
New York for years to come. 
I stopped off at the little Indian 
pueblo of Isleta on the way to Santa 
Fe, and there saw the American In- 
dian—the real, old ancient descend- 
ant. 
They gather around you with their 
trays of topaz, and baskets of pot- 
tery, but they never ask vou to buy. 
They stare at you with those eyes 
of a far past, and one can’t help 
but respect them. LEach has his 
wares but none urge their sales— 
you may select a piece of pottery 
from the first one or the last one and 
it apparently seems all the same to 
them. The Indian girl stands back 
and looks at you with eyes of old 
Tiquez. She wears the garb of 400 
years ago. Select a piece from her 
basket and she will simply tell you 
the price, and when you have bought 
it it would seem that she has done 
the favor. The only mark of civ- 
ilization that I could note was when 
she short-changed me, and a bystand- 
er insisted that she make good. 
If there is a man, woman or child 
in New Mexico who is not a Catho- 
lic, he or she must be lonesome. ‘The 
church and religion is universal, and 
it seems to me that every hour some- 
one is going to church somewhere. 
Day and night the bells toll for some 
service, and everybody goes. In the 
old San Miguel church at Santa Fe, 
the Cure, a venerable, white-headed 
old man, looked at my name in the 
register, and told me his boyhood 
home was in Rome and Seneca Falis, 
N. Y., and we spent a most pleasant 
half-hour, I telling him of central 
New York and its changes, and he 
listening with eager interest. Of 
course, he learned I was not a Catho- 
lic, yet he pressed on me an invita- 
tion to come back every day and 
visit with him. 
What I most miss in this country 
is the English language. I shall for- 
get how to speak it if I do not hear 
it more often. Anywhere, every- 
where you go you hear the Spanish. 
You will see a young fellow who you 
will size up as just out of an east- 
ern college, and is spending dad’s 
money on a tourist trip. You will 
change tables at the Spanish res- 
taurant to be with him and just 
when you have decided to ask him 
if he is from Buffalo or Detroit, you 
will hear him give his dinner order 
to the Spanish girl. The only fel- 
low I have had really appeal to me 
was one who asked me to loan him, 
ten dollars until he could get his 
cleaning and pressing sign out. He 
said he was short just this amount, 
and I could stand on the gate and 
take the coin until he made me good. 
~ He said that he used to press and 
clean for the Stafford in Buffalo. 
I haven’t written a word about 
the climate of this, the 13th day of 
February, 1910. The eastern news 
dispatches tell me winter has the 
call back in New York, Ohio and 
Pennsylvania, yet ij am up here on 
a sand butte, with my eoat off. On 
the top of the hills | can see snow 
in any direction on the tops of the 
mountains which seem only a haif- 
hour’s walk, and when the wind 
blows down from Cotorado it has 
the smell and tumperature of snow. 
But just get under cover fromthe 
north’s breezes and it is siliimer-— 
a bright, beautiful sunshine suin- 
mer, that savors of indolence. 
Today, a little outside of Stanta 
Fe, I visited an old city of the dead 
—an old burial place that probably 
has history buried in every square 
rod, but which is but Greek to me. 
~decay—every foot. 
It is the most forlorn, neglected spot 
I ever saw. The yard covers sev- 
eral acres, enclosed by a tumbling 
down ’dobe fence and as sad a place 
as one could find in historic New 
Mexico. Simply ruin, neglect and 
There are old 
Spanish wood carvings over some of 
the graves, that were they anywhere 
but in a land replete with our coun- — 
try’s old history, would be of unusu- 
al interest. Few go near this place, 
and its stones are fallen and graves 
neglected. I never saw a more for- 
lorn spot. Almost everything is 
Spanish and Catholic. Here is a 
grave marked by a mesquite stub, 
wired to which are two common 
stones. I can’t guess the signifi- 
cance, but the man who placed that 
monument there, perhaps 200 years 
ago, knew. Over there is a sand- 
stone broken down, on which are 
carvings and designs which seem to 
me should be in the territory’s mu- 
seum. All is Spanish. The eross is 
everywhere. 
But in a hidden spot, under a mes- 
quite clump, and where only accident 
directed me, I found a simple little 
slab on which was inscribed: 
An American, peace to his ash- 
es.’ . 
Can you imagine what kind of a 
story those half-dozen words tell? 
His name is not there. Why? Cer- 
tainly Americans buried him down 
there, and thought him of enough 
record to mark the spot. Who he 
was, how he died, when he died, why 
he died and what about him you 
may guess. His was the only Amer- 
ican grave I found in a two hours’ 
search in that desolate cemetery, and 
I would give much to know more. 
One curious bit of stone carving - 
in a neglected corner attracted my 
attention. It was a crude outline of ~ 
a heart with a knife thrust through, 
and under it some Spanish words I 
could not translate. The crumbled 
stone told the story of age, but it 
did not relate the tragedy or ro- 
mance. And I scratched a 1910 
match on this stone, ighted a Turk- 
ish trophy and wondered what it 
was all about—whether it told the 
story of some long-forgotten love af- 
fair, and the pierced heart repre- 
sented a ‘‘died of a broken heart’’ in 
1420 or whether it would say that_ 
some Navajo Indian struck six inch- 
es of steel into it to settle some little 
gentleman’s affair in the long ago. 
Now you guess. 
What seems to me a serious ne- 
glect is the erumbling of these his- 
toric places. 
states, the government and historic 
societies are taking active steps to 
preserve history and historical spots 
Back in the east, the. 
~ 
ra 
eres 
IRM ATR te erperine pAO Mi 
