The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke Volume 5: May 23, 1881--August 26, 1881

7. Picuris and Beyond

150 Chapter 7 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Picuris and Beyond W e left San Juan for the Pueblo of Picuris, ascending the lovely valley of the Rio Grande, at this point green with maturing harvests—half a mile in width & many miles in length. Passed through Plaza Alcalde, Capillito, Villita, and Lucero, small Mexican towns of no importance. Asked the road from a batch of native laborers, mending a ditch; all stopped work to answer our questions and gave us minute directions. This is a charming trait in the character of the Mexican field-hand, one which I admire greatly. No matter how important the work upon which he is engaged, he will at any and all times drop it to enter into a conversation with a passerby. How much his employers may admire this trait, I am not yet in a position to say, but infer that as it is the well-established custom of the country, they must by this time, have become used to it. Passed through La Joya and on to a reservoir for irrigating a small acreage at a hamlet called “El Ojito”. While our team was drinking, I entered one of the squalid little houses. Floor and walls were both of adobe and, excepting the “vigas” and branches, the roof also. There was no furniture, but a feebly blanketed bed. The man of the house very politely offered to show us the shortest road to Picuris conquerors of Aztec Mexico, and the Castilians as auxiliaries, no doubt they brought their own tales of the Conquest with them. pIcurIS and Beyond 151 which is so seldom travelled now a days that it is very easy to go astray. His gracious courtesy was highly appreciated, as it saved us from much annoyance and useless delay. Saw this morning, the usual wooden plows yoked to the horns of cattle. Kept on, in a direction nearly north for a few miles, the road getting rough and steep. But little have come this way for a long time and the road had not yet been repaired where washed out by the storms and freshets of last winter and spring. So difficult was it to trace, that we lost our way and had gone nearly to Embudo (Funnel.) when a Mexican driving an ox-team met us and pointed out where we should turn off. These directions were given in a kindly way and yet the Mexican in his topographical description is as full of “poco mas allá”, [“]poquito retirado”, [“]á la izuierda de vuelta,[”] “cuesta arriba”; [“]la cañada adelante”, and other ambiguous terms, that it is no wonder we soon became snarled in the wrong “cañada” and could neither advance nor retreat. The driver unhitched the mules unshipped the lead bars, fastened them to hind axles with leather straps and then hitching in the “wheelers”; gave them to me to lead down the “arroyo” while he guided the wagonpole . With some little difficulty, we extricated ourselves from our embarrassment and started afresh only to become again and again involved in a net-work of water-worn, timber-choked and “blind” arroyo leading no one knows where. At last we struck a well-defined “carreta” road, with fresh tracks: rapid driving for a few moments enabled us to overtake the cart whose driver we recognized as the man from whom we had an hour or two ago received such careful directions. He consented to go back with us and point out the road; this to our intense disgust and amazement, ran right alongside the “arroyo” where we had stalled, but was so water-worn that no one but an inhabitant of the country could have hit upon it. I gave our Mexican friend a small sum of money for his goodness and thanked him most heartily. We had to cross a rather steep ridge (cuchillo.); which passed, we encountered the little Mexican village of “Ojo Zarco” or Blue Spring. Darkness had come on. There was nothing to be done, but to remain here all night. Anticipating some such trouble I had ordered the driver to put on an extra sack of grain, and a small bundle of compressed hay for our mules, so that they did not suffer. For ourselves, the driver had his rations of bacon, bread and coffee and in the house where we obtained permission to 152 the new mexIco pueBloS stay, I found nine fresh eggs,—a feast...