Then there was Santa Fe. On west of it
lay nearly a thousand miles of wild broken lands before one
came to the village of Los Angeles. But there was no trail to
Los Angeles. At Santa Fe the trail turned south and after
crawling over the Jornada del Muerto--Journey of the Dead
Man--threading the great Pass of the North (El Paso) and
crossing a vast desert, reached Chihuahua City.
Looked at in one way, Santa Fe was a mud village. In another
way, it was the solitary oasis of human picturesqueness in a
continent of vacancy. Like that of Athens, though of an
entirely different quality, its fame was out of all proportion
to its size. In a strong chapter, entitled "A Caravan Enters
Santa Fe," R. L. Duffus _(The Santa Fe Trail)_ elaborates on
how for all travelers the town always had "the lure of
adventure." Josiah Gregg doubted whether "the first sight of
the walls of Jerusalem were beheld with much more tumultuous
and soul-enrapturing joy" than Santa Fe was by a caravan
topping the last rise and, eight hundred miles of solitude
behind it, looking down on the town's shining walls and
cottonwoods.
No other town of its size in America has been the subject of
and focus for as much good literature as Santa Fe.
Pages:
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129