restricted in the immense territory which its numerical weakness yet prevents it entirely occupying.
Imprisoned within its vast frontiers, making a right of strength, it is continually displacing its neighbours' landmarks, and encroaching on territory of which it can make no use. Daily, bands of emigrants abandon their dwellings, and with their rifles on their shoulders, their axes in their hand, they proceed south, as if impelled by a will stronger than themselves; and neither mountains, deserts, nor virgin forests are sufficient obstacles to make them halt even for an instant. The Yankees imagine themselves generally the instruments of Providence, and appointed by the decrees of the Omnipotent to people and civilise the New World. They count with feverish impatience the hours which must elapse ere the day (close at hand in their ideas) arrive in which their race and government system will occupy the entire space contained between Cape North and the Isthmus of Panama, to the exclusion of the Spanish republics on one side, and the English colonies on the other.
These projects, of which the Americans make no mystery, but, on the contrary, openly boast, are perfectly well known to the Mexicans, who cordially detest their neighbours, and employ all the means in their power to create difficulties for them, and impede their successive encroachments.
Among the New Mexican landowners who resolved to make sacrifices in order to stop, or at least check, the imminent invasion from North America, the richest, and possibly, first of all, through his intelligence and the influence he justly enjoyed in the country, was Don Miguel Acamarichtzin Zarate.
Whatever may be asserted, the Indian population of Mexico is nearly double in number to the white men, and possesses an enormous influence. Don Miguel descended in a straight line from Acamarichtzin, first king of Mexico, whose name had been preserved in the family as a precious relic. Possessed of an incalculable fortune, Don Miguel lived on his enormous estates like a king in his empire, beloved and respected by the Indians, whom he effectively protected whenever the occasion presented itself, and who felt for him a veneration carried almost to idolatry; for they saw in him the descendant from one of their most celebrated kings, and the born defender of their race.
In New Mexico the Indian population has very largely increased during the past fifty years. Some authors, indeed, assert that it is now more numerous than prior to the conquest, which is very probable, through the apathy of the Spaniards, and the carelessness they have ever displayed in their struggles against it. But the Indians have remained stationary amid the incessant progress of civilization, and still retain intact the principal traits of their old manners. Scattered here and there in miserable ranchos or villages, they live in separate tribes, governed by their caciques, and they have mingled but very few Spanish words with their idioms, which they speak as in the time of the Aztecs. The sole apparent change in them is their conversion to Catholicism – a conversion more than problematical, as they preserve with the utmost care all the recollections of their ancient religion, follow its rites in secret, and keep up all its superstitious practices.
The Indians – above all, in New Mexico – although called Indios fideles, are always ready on the first opportunity to ally themselves with their desert congeners; and in the incursions of the Apaches and Comanches it is rare for the faithful Indians not to serve them as scouts, guides, and spies.
The family of Don Miguel Zarate had retired to New Mexico, which country it did not leave again – a few years after the conquests of the adventurer Cortez. Don Miguel had closely followed the policy of his family by maintaining the bonds of friendship and good neighbourhood which, from time immemorial, attached it to the Indians, believers or not. This policy had borne its fruit. Annually, in September, when the terrible red warriors, preceded by murder and arson, rushed like a torrent on the wretched inhabitants, whom they massacred in the farms they plundered, without pity of age or sex, Don Miguel Zarate's estates were respected; and not merely was no damage inflicted on them, but even if at times a field were unwittingly trampled by the horses' hoofs, or a few trees destroyed by plunderers, the evil was immediately repaired ere the owner had opportunity for complaint.
This conduct of the Indians had not failed to arouse against Don Miguel extreme jealousy on the part of the inhabitants, who saw themselves periodically ruined by the Indios Bravos. Earnest complaints had been laid against him before the Mexican Government; but whatever might be the power of his enemies, and the means they employed to ruin him, the rich hacendero had never been seriously disturbed: in the first place, because New Mexico is too remote from the capital for the inhabitants to have anything to fear from the governing classes; and secondly, Don Miguel was too rich not to render it easy for him to impose silence on those who were most disposed to injure him.
Don Miguel, whose portrait we drew in a previous chapter, was left a widower after eight years' marriage, with two children, a boy and a girl, the son being twenty-four, the daughter seventeen, at the period when our story opens. Doña Clara – such was the daughter's name – was one of the most delicious maidens that can be imagined. She had one of those Murillo's virgin heads, whose black eyes, fringed with long silky lashes, pure mouth, and dreamy brow seem to promise divine joys. Her complexion, slightly bronzed by the warm sunbeams, wore that gilded reflection which so well becomes the women of these intertropical countries. She was short of stature, but exquisitely modelled. Gentle and simple, ignorant as a Creole, this delicious child was adored by her father, who saw in her the wife he had so loved living once more. The Indians looked after her when she at times passed pensively, plucking a flower before their wretched huts, and scarce bending the slants on which she placed her delicate foot. In their hearts they compared this frail maiden, with her soft and vaporous outline, to the "virgin of the first loves," that sublime creation of the Indian religion which holds so great a place in the Aztec mythology.
Don Pablo Zarate, the hacendero's son, was a powerfully built man, with harshly marked features, and a haughty glance, although at times it was imprinted with gentleness and kindness. Endowed with more than ordinary strength, skilled in all bodily exercises, Don Pablo was renowned through the whole country for his talent in taming the most spirited horses, and the correctness of his aim when on the chase. A determined hunter and daring wood ranger, this young man, when he had a good horse between his legs, and his rifle in his hand, knew none, man or animal, capable of barring his passage. The Indians, in their simple faith, yielded to the son the same respect and veneration they entertained for the father, and fancied they saw in him the personification of Huitzilopochtli, that terrible war god of the Aztecs, to whom 62,000 human victims were sacrificed in one day, upon the inauguration of his teocali.
The Zarates, then, at the period when our story opens, were real kings of New Mexico. The felicity they enjoyed was suddenly troubled by one of those vulgar incidents which, though unimportant in themselves, do not fail to cause a general perturbation, and a discomfort possessing no apparent cause, from the fact that it is impossible to foresee or prevent them. The circumstance was as follows: —
Don Miguel possessed, in the vicinity of the Paso, vast estates extending for a great distance, and consisting principally of haciendas, prairies, and forests. One day Don Miguel was returning from a visit to his haciendas. It was late, and he pressed on his horse in order to reach ere night the ford, when, at about three or four leagues at the most from the spot to which he was proceeding, and just as he was entering a dense forest of cottonwood trees, through which he must pass ere reaching the ford, his attention was attracted by cries mingled with growls emerging from the wood he was about to enter. The hacendero stopped in order to account for the unusual sounds he heard, and bent his head forward to detect what was happening. But it was impossible for him to distinguish anything through the chaos of creepers and shrubs which intercepted vision. In the meanwhile, the noise grew louder, and the shouts were redoubled, and mingled with oaths and passionate exclamations.
The Mexican's horse laid back its ears, neighed, and refused to advance. Still Don Miguel must make up his mind. Thinking that a man was probably attacked by wild beasts, he only consulted his heart; and, in spite of the visible repugnance of his steed, he compelled it to go forward and enter the wood. He had scarce gone a few yards ere he stopped in amazement
