Читать книгу The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas - Фредерик Марриет - Страница 13

At last we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to Santa Fé. Much hath been written about this rich and romantic city, where formerly, if we were to believe travellers, dollars and doubloons were to be had merely for picking them up; but I suspect the writers had never seen the place, for it is a miserable, dirty little hole, containing about three thousand souls, almost all of them half-bred, naked, and starved. Such is Santa Fé. You will there witness spectacles of wretchedness and vice hardly to be found elsewhere–harsh despotism; immorality carried to its highest degree, with drunkenness and filth.

The value of the Santa Fé trade has been very much exaggerated. This town was formerly the readiest point to which goods could be brought overland from the States to Mexico; but since the colonization of Texas it is otherwise. The profits also obtained in this trade are far from being what they used to be. The journey from St. Louis (Missouri) is very tedious, the distance being about twelve hundred miles, nor is the journey ended when you reach Santa Fé, as they have to continue to Chihuahua. Goods come into the country at a slight duty, compared to that payable on the coast, five hundred dollars only (whatever may be the contents), being charged upon each waggon; and it is this privilege which supports the trade. But the real market commences at Chihuahua; north of which nothing is met with by the traveller, except the most abject moral and physical misery.

Of course, our time passed most tediously; the half-breeds were too stupid to converse with, and the Yankee traders constantly tipsy. Had it not been that Gabriel was well acquainted with the neighbourhood, we should positively have died of ennui. As it was, however, we made some excursions among the rancheros, or cattle-breeders, and visited several Indian tribes, with whom we hunted, waiting impatiently for a westward-bound caravan.

One day, I had a rather serious adventure. Roche and Gabriel were bear-hunting, while I, feeling tired, had remained in a rancho, where, for a few days, we had had some amusement; in the afternoon, I felt an inclination to eat some fish, and being told that at three or four miles below, there was a creek full of fine basses, I went away with my rifle, hooks, and line. I soon found the spot, and was seeking for some birds or squirrels, whose flesh I could use as bait. As, rifle in hand, I walked, watching the branches of the trees along the stream, I felt something scratching my leggings and moccasins; I looked down, and perceived a small panther-cub frisking and frolicking around my feet, inviting me to play with it. It was a beautiful little creature, scarcely bigger than a common cat. I sat down, put my rifle across my knees, and for some minutes caressed it, as I would have done an ordinary kitten; it became very familiar, and I was just thinking of taking it with me, when I heard behind me a loud and well-known roar, and, as the little thing left me, over my head bounded a dark heavy body. It was a full-grown panther, the mother of the cub. I had never thought of her.

I rose immediately. The beast having missed the leap, had fallen twelve feet before me. It crouched, sweeping the earth with its long tail, and looking fiercely at me. Our eyes met; I confess it, my heart was very small within me. I had my rifle, to be sure, but the least movement to poise it would have been the signal for a spring from the animal. At last, still crouching, it crept back, augmenting the distance to about thirty feet. Then it made a circle round me, never for a moment taking its eyes off my face, for the cub was still playing at my feet. I have no doubt that if the little animal had been betwixt me and the mother, she would have snatched it and run away with it. As it was, I felt very, very queer; take to my heels I could not, and the panther would not leave her cub behind; on the contrary, she continued making a circle round me, I turning with her, and with my rifle pointed towards her.

As we both turned, with eyes straining at each other, inch by inch I slowly raised my rifle, till the butt reached my shoulder; I caught the sight and held my breath. The cub, in jumping, hurt itself, and mewed; the mother answered by an angry growl, and just as she was about to spring, I fired; she stumbled backwards, and died without a struggle. My ball, having entered under the left eye, had passed through the skull, carrying with it a part of the brain.

It was a terrific animal; had I missed it, a single blow from her paw would have crushed me to atoms. Dead as it was, with its claws extended, as if to seize its prey, and its bleeding tongue hanging out, it struck me with awe. I took off the skin, hung it to a tree, and securing the cub, I hastened home, having lost my appetite for fishing or a fish-supper for that evening.

A week after this circumstance, a company of traders arrived from St. Louis. They had been attacked by Indians, and made a doleful appearance. During their trip they had once remained six days without any kind of food, except withered grass. Here it may not be amiss to say a few words about the origin of this inland mercantile expedition, and the dangers with which the traders are menaced.

In 1807, Captain Pike, returning from his exploring trip in the interior of the American continent, made it known to the United States merchants that they could establish a very profitable commerce with the central provinces of the north of Mexico; and in 1812, a small party of adventurers. Millar, Knight, Chambers, Beard, and others, their whole number not exceeding twelve, forced their way from St. Louis to Santa Fé, with a small quantity of goods.

It has always been the policy of the Spaniards to prevent strangers from penetrating into the interior of their colonies. At that period, Mexico being in revolution, strangers, and particularly Americans, were looked upon with jealousy and distrust. These merchants were, consequently, seized upon, their goods confiscated, and themselves shut up in the prisons of Chihuahua, where, during several years, they underwent a rigorous treatment.

It was, I believe, in the spring of 1821, that Chambers, with the other prisoners, returned to the United States, and shortly afterwards a treaty with the States rendered the trade lawful. Their accounts induced one Captain Glenn, of Cincinnati, to join them in a commercial expedition, and another caravan, twenty men strong, started again for Santa Fé. They sought a shorter road, to fall in with the Arkansas river, but their enterprise failed; for, instead of ascending the stream of the Canadian fork, it appears that they only coasted the great river to its intersection by the Missouri road.

There is not a drop of water in this horrible region, which extends even to the Cimaron river, and in this desert they had to suffer all the pangs of thirst. They were reduced to the necessity of killing their dogs and bleeding their mules to moisten their parched lips. None of them perished; but, quite dispirited, they changed their direction and turned back to the nearest point of the river Arkansas, where they were at least certain to find abundance of water. By this time their beasts of burden were so tired and broken down that they had become of no use. They were therefore obliged to conceal their goods, and arrived without any more trouble at Santa Fé, when, procuring other mules, they returned to their cachette.

Many readers are probably unaware of the process employed by the traders to conceal their cargo, their arms, and even their provisions. It is nothing more than a large excavation In the earth, in the shape of a jar, in which the objects are stored; the bottom of the cachette having been first covered with wood and canvas, so as to prevent anything being spoiled by the damp. The important science of cachaye (Canadian expression) consists in leaving no trace which might betray it to the Indians; to prevent this, the earth taken from the excavation is put into blankets and carried to a great distance.

The place generally selected for a cachette is a swell in the prairie, sufficiently elevated to be protected from any kind of inundation, and the arrangement is so excellent, that it is very seldom that the traders lose anything in their cachette, either by the Indians, the changes of the climate, or the natural dampness of the earth.

In the spring of 1820, a company from Franklin, in the west of Missouri, had already proceeded to Santa Fé, with twelve mules loaded with goods. They crossed prairies where no white man had ever penetrated, having no guides but the stars of Heaven, the morning breeze from the mountains, and perhaps a pocket compass. Daily they had to pass through hostile nations; but spite of many other difficulties, such as ignorance of the passes and want of water, they arrived at Santa Fé.

The adventurers returned to Missouri during the fall; their profit had been immense, although the capital they had employed had been very small. Their favourable reports produced a deep sensation, and in the spring of the next year, Colonel Cooper and some associates, to the number of twenty-two, started with fourteen mules well loaded. This time the trip was a prompt and a fortunate one; and the merchants of St. Louis getting bolder and bolder, formed, in 1822, a caravan of seventy men, who carried with them goods to the amount of forty thousand dollars.

Thus began the Santa Fé trade, which assumed a more regular character. Companies started in the spring to return in the fall, with incredible benefits, and the trade increasing, the merchants reduced the number of their guards, till, eventually, repeated attacks from the savages obliged them to unite together, in order to travel with safety.

At first the Indians appeared disposed to let them pass without any kind of interruption; but during the summer of 1826 they began to steal the mules and the horses of the travellers; yet they killed nobody till 1828. Then a little caravan, returning from Santa Fé, followed the stream of the north fork of the Canadian river. Two of the traders, having preceded the company in search of game, fell asleep on the edge of a brook. These were espied by a band of Indians, who surprised them, seized their rifles, took their scalps and retired before the caravan had reached the brook, which had been agreed upon as the place of rendezvous. When the traders arrived, one of the victims still breathed. They carried him to the Cimaron, where he expired, and was buried according to the prairie fashion.

Scarcely had the ceremony been terminated, when upon a neighbouring hill appeared four Indians, apparently ignorant of what had happened. The exasperated merchants invited them into their camp, and murdered all except one, who, although wounded, succeeded in making his escape.

This cruel retaliation brought down heavy punishment. Indeed from that period the Indians vowed an eternal war–a war to the knife, "in the forests and the prairies, in the middle of rivers and lakes, and even among the mountains covered with eternal snows."

Shortly after this event another caravan was fallen in with and attacked by the savages, who carried off with them thirty-five scalps, two hundred and fifty mules, and goods to the amount of thirty thousand dollars.

These terrible dramas were constantly reacted in these vast western solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown, until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being, covered with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone had escaped.

In 1831, Mr. Sublette and his company crossed the prairies with twenty-five waggons. He and his company were old pioneers among the Rocky Mountains, whom the thirst of gold had transformed into merchants. They went without guides, and no one among them had ever performed the trip. All that they knew was that they were going from such to such a degree of longitude. They reached the Arkansas river, but from thence to the Cimaron there is no road, except the numerous paths of the buffaloes, which, intersecting the prairie, very often deceive the travellers.

When the caravan entered this desert the earth was entirely dry, and the pioneers mistaking their road, wandered during several days exposed to all the horrors of a febrile thirst under a burning sun. Often they were seduced by the deceitful appearance of a buffalo-path, and in this perilous situation Captain Smith, one of the owners of the caravan, resolved to follow one of these paths, which he considered would indubitably lead him to some spring of water or to a marsh.

He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and if but half of what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man! after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to bleach upon the desert sands.

He was about twelve miles from his comrades, when, turning round a small hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small stream glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was the river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but just as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows. A band of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he struggled bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as he was, before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people.

Such was the origin of the Santa Fé trade, and such are the liabilities which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West.