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BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214)
2500 East
Fourth Avenue,
80206-4214
(Columbine Street at East Fourth Avenue)

Telephone:
(303) 388-5969
Fax: (720) 424-9355
E-mail: Bromwell@dpsk12.org

Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal

Miss Nettie's Travel Diary

1. NEW MEXICO

I came into Santa Fe at midnight, all alone, in an old bus with a colored porter and an enormous valise. The bus was very uncertain on its wheels; it would jerk to the right sharply, and almost before I could be adjusted to suit that position it would whisk to the left and then perhaps the next moment turn clear around like the "Flying Dutchman" of my childhood.

The next morning all this was intelligible. It had been accommodating itself to the crooked streets which were made several hundred years before the invention of tourists. Some of these streets along which the balconies had seemed to revolve. are so narrow that the shadows of the one story adobe houses lie quite across them in the middle of the afternoon. They curve with more persistency than the "Loop" at Georgetown, and do everything but run under each other. I had trouble all the time in finding the Plaza, which was only a few hundred feet away; and after I had attained the Plaza had all satisfaction destroyed in the effort to again reach the hotel, which would be all the time in plain sight above the houses. The older buildings are most or them covered with a dark gray stucco and have wooden columned porches extending over the sidewalks. They are very much alike. The "Palace," as it is called, is as prosaic in appearance as any of them, though vice regal state was held in it for one hundred and fifty years. Here Gen. Lew Wallace wrote the famous novel "Ben Hur," when he was Governor of New Mexico. The people are very proud of the circumstance and he was very popular with them.

There are many other ancient buildings here, but many of them have been so much restored as to leave very few marks of time visible. San Miguel Church is, as everybody (in Santa Fe) knows, the very oldest in the United States. Dr. Alexander, of Jaurez, considers the church at Isleta, Texas, to be older, but the Fathers at Santa Fe think differently, and I sided with them, especiaIly after the delightful little Catholic boy who showed me through had made a little fire of sticks for me to warm my fingers by. The oldest house in the United States stands near the church and can be inspected for the moderate sum of ten cents. It has recently suffered a collapse of its upper story. It is a remnant of the ancient Pueblo which stood here at the time of the Spanish invasion, and Coronado is believed to have lodged in it when he came to the place with his band of adventurers in 1580. These old buildings are all of brown adobe, rather dark and of a coarse sandy texture, with little circular cracks marking its surface. They are most of them small with little rooms, often no courts, and fitted up with modern doors and glazed windows. The larger houses are still more modern, often decorated on the outside of the stucco with lines of red or dark blue or gray paint, and have courts like those of J aurez, but with more woodwork and paint and little board sidewalks. Very little or no fantastic costume is to be seen on the streets. A number of Pueblo Indians had entered the cars at a station below Albuquerque, all dressed in white and scarlet. They carried oval bowls filled with their curious wares for sale-their potteries and beads. But they are not seen a great deal in the capital, being quite sufficient unto themselves, and not needing many supplies from the merchants.

The old city must be beautiful in the summer when the wild roses are in bloom, for the creek banks are lined with them, making a delicious brown red color with their naked stems. The mountains encircle the town and are fine in outline and many of them far enough away to have good color if the atmosphere is favorable. Starvation Park is noted as the scene of a seventeenth century tragedy. It is about thirty miles away, near the little Mexican village of San Bernal. On its flat top can be seen many crosses erected in memory of the early Spanish settlers, who had enslaved the Pueblo Indians and who on their revolt in 1680 took refuge here with their families and died of exposure and hunger.

Little adobe huts perch on the hills nearer town, and some handsome villas are built with a fine prospect over the valley. The yellow stone territorial capitol building which was erected at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was burned about a year ago, and now stands a picturesque ruin in its large grassy square.

The new State will probably erect a still more magnificent building in its place. There is a fine substantial penitentiary building of dark gray stone, and a very handsome Gothic government building. The new business houses are many of them several stories high, and there is a fine group of Catholic schools. They flourish greatly here among the Spanish-Americans.

From Santa Fe to Las Vegas Hot Springs is only a short ride by rail. At the Springs one scarcely feels out of Colorado but for the mild air like that of our October days at home; and the color suggests October, for the undergrowths on the hills are brown, though many little purple flowers, like violet, peep up from the moss.

Where the Gallinas River bends toward the higher hills the canon walls become narrow and precipitous; and in places great masses of red and gray stone enclose the two banks of the stream. The river has many pretty waterfalls and little nooks where the aspens grow in clumps quite down to the water's edge. Their stems are very white and delicate against the dark green pines.

The unsightly little shanties and boarding houses which disfigure most resorts are not seen here; a few of them are left standing; but they are tenantless and will soon be cleared away.

The Montezuma is the largest and most elegantly managed hotel I have ever seen at a resort. It sits on a high hill, and at night as it blazes on the tired traveller approaching it after a long ride seems to be a palace in fairyland with its hundreds of electric lights outlining it against the sky. It has long white corridors that seem to have no end, and rich draperies of crimson, and Italian harpers making music all the time. Inside of it one is in the city; outside of it in the wild Rocky Mountains.

Over in the old town of Las Vegas, Mexican people are to be seen much like those at Santa Fe -- well dressed and very progressive. The new town originated at the coming of the railroad and already contains large flouring mills and factories and enormous railroad shops. Dotted up and down the country are many little Mexican Placitas, all of dark brown adobe, and each with a tiny church built with a little arch in front for the bell. One little church had no bell at all, but suspended between two posts a circular saw which when struck gave out a musical ring which answered all purposes.

2. TEXAS AND MEXICO

An artist, whatever his specialty, could not take a trip that would afford him more interest than that from Denver to El Paso. He would see every variety of scenery, excepting the severely grand (for which Co1orado people need not have the trouble of leaving home) and would in El Paso be on the very edge of that land of Mexico, only second in interest to Italy, where the people are more like the birds in their innocence and simplicity than in any of the countries visited by American tourists in Europe.

To the artist masculine the trip has no mortifying feature; but to those more awkward wielders of the brush and pen whose luggage is freighted with steel hair curlers and many degrees of arctic overshoes and rubber coats, and gloves with fingers and gloves without fingers, there is a little embarrassment. It is difficult to get one's belongings into a small satchel; but after all, not so hard as to paint a good thing out of one's head, even if the head be decorated with a mustache. I have even known heads capable of raising beards that did better in front of a good subject; and the success of the beard was not a quarter of the success of the sketch, although, as we all know, it usually made a difference when the public exhibition was held.

There is very little green here yet, and the spring colors will never have the tender quality they have further north; for the old leaves from last year hang until late in the season, leaving a mixture of yellowish brown, which somewhat deadens the delicacy of the new foliage. But the blossoms are beginning to come out on the bare fruit trees, and soon the orchards and patios will be radiant in white and pink, which will be more novel to a Coloradan than February foliage.

Everything here is a dainty brownish buff color. In the city, the fronts of the long, low, crooked rows of houses are white-washed. In the country they are apt to be yellow like the dust. And the dust here is as fine and clean as pulverized white sugar, and lies in the hollows of the narrow lanes opening irregularly into the city in drifts so deep and beautifully marked with delicate waving lines of shadow that it is painful to spoil it by driving through it. It blows from one lane into another, so that a wind- swept passage can always be obtained by going across to another street. The finest dust storms in the world are to be seen here. A gale of wind comes down the Rio Grande lifting its very banks. You see it come toward you in brown, feathery waves, through which the weeds look up like ghosts. And trees across the street seem on the edge of the world. Our Colorado sand is too coarse and heavy for these dainty effects, and they are never enjoyed by the artist but in adobe countries.

The garden walls here are al1 of adobe, and very picturesque, especially when ruinous, being built like low fortifications, the top rows of adobes laid on with little openings or spaces between. The whitewash has dropped off long ago from the ruins in the lanes opening south of Jaurez. Some of the old buildings indicate by their ancient doors of richly carved cedar, an antiquity as great as that of the old church which dates back to the settlement of the valley by the Franciscan Fathers three hundred years or more ago. Most of them are built like all Mexican houses, around a court or patio, which is often paved in bluish pebbles and planted with flowers and apple and almond trees.

There is one picturesque old dwelling that I named the Ruins of Babylon, its porch contains such ponderous squares masses of adobe in columns, nearly all of them decayed, and some standing alone quite like ruins in some classic land. We found, after returning to it several times and gaining courage to enter its arched gateway, that it was inhabited by a dark-eyed Senor and Senora and their little grand child. They graciously permitted us to set up our camp stool inside the wall, and before we finished became fast friends of ours, always inviting us to dinner and keeping our camp stool and paints between times, They had no English and we very little Spanish, but we understood each other, The kitchen in this house is lighted only by the chimney, which rests on a thick log fitted into opposite sides of the adobe walls. The space above this log, on either side of the chimney, is fitted in with sticks and mud to make receptacles for corn husks (for tamales) and other things. Underneath the chimney a tiny fire is kept during the progress of the meal and not at any other time (for Mesquite is precious), so the only light about the room is from above the hearth. The Mexicans, if in their uncivilized state, have no kitchen furniture whatever, and onIy a few earthen and wooden dishes. These our host set out for us on a little wooden bench. They grouped themselves about the hearth, the man nursing the baby and the woman rolling her tortillas, which she baked over the fire on a little piece of sheet iron, patting them down snugly with a white rag rolled into a ball, and all the time casting her coal-black eyes off into the darkness in which we sat admiring her. After we had enjoyed the tortillas and frijoles and they had tasted our Saratoga chips and candy, the Senor took us over his garden and through his house, clanking his huge bunch of keys as he went, for the Mexicans lock up their empty houses as though they contained the treasures of Ophir. The baby kept kissing him as he carried it about, and he explained to us that it only knew these words, mamma and papa and gracias-the latter word absent from the vocabulary of American infants.

The Mexicans are very polite. They never come behind you like a citizen of the Bottoms with a "Do you see them there?" or a "Whadder you git fur them?" They let you make all the advances, which they meet gracious1y, and will calI you "Senorita" if you are one hundred years old. You can see that they are very proud and will never beg unless sick or blind.

When a poor Mexican woman is in trouble she goes up to the White Church, crosses herself with fingers dipped in the holy water, and kneels before the altar of the blessed Virgin. Her faith soon makes her happy again, although her body often goes hungry and cold to pay for it. At all times in the old church groups of these poor people are to be seen kneeling before the different altars; for the church is never closed, and one can witness daily their simple ceremonies of baptism and marriage.

Many of the carvings of the old church seem to have been hewn out with stone hatchets. There is much beauty and symmetry about its style. It is kept white without and within, and has old bells, one of which is half silver. The stairway in the tower is the most primitive piece of the builders' art I ever saw, made of huge, almost square hewn oak logs, radiating from a center pole placed upright in the round inside tower. These stairs are so dark with age and worn that it is curious to look at them and think of the generations who have climbed them. There is an opening, or eye, at one turn of the steps where you can crawl in and look out over the housetops. The view here must have changed little in the last hundred years. The same brown adobe roofs, the blossoming trees rising from the patios in the same way, the vegetables and fruits and sweetmeats spread out on the street corners.

But the modern city over the Rio Grande is making changes in Juarez. El Paso is too near, and before many years most of these old things will vanish. The fine new custom house, of which the Mexicans are so proud, and the grey stone depot and the rail-road shops show the progress of the age. Even the old church feels the march of time and begins to take modern airs. The ever-burning light of the altar is an electric one, and many of the old cedar carvings have been painted over. The wooden floor itself is modern, having been laid over the old slab-covered graves. Some of the windows have been glazed, though the birds still fly back and forth through the wooden grating that light the transept.

Perhaps we admired it more than we would have done if we had been down into the interior where finer things are said to be. But old things had a fascination for us all, and we had not seen the finer places, so Santa Gaudaloupe will always be our ideal Mexican church.

What a pity the Franciscan Fathers could not have taken a peep forward and built their mission over the river! Then it would be the oldest church in the United States.

3. THE OLDEST CHURCH

We were looking for the oldest Mexican church; all those we had seen had been somewhat modernized. We heard of one at San Ignacio, but on inquiry learned that it had been dissolved by a flood in the river. Nobody in El Paso knew anything about it. The El Paso folks did not like the Mexicans and thought it very dangerous for three women to go exploring among them in such a way. "You will be murdered and the horse and buggy stolen,[per thou] they said. We felt that it was very risky. We had some diamond rings among us and we carried them to the bank; the person in charge there approved our discretion. We were advised to take a pistol, and purchased one which we placed under us in the buggy seat. We were very much afraid that it would go off.

The morning was still and clear. Linnets were singing; peach trees blushing over the broken walls. The customs in- spector on the Mexican side of the river passed us with his usual gracious bow. He had an American assistant, a native of Indiana, who had more curiosity: "Have you ladies a camera with you or is it just hand painting?" he asked.

We explained our lack of machinery to his satisfaction and passed on. Groups of burros were coming into Jaurez loaded with enormous round bundles of mesquite root. From every lane they were arriving, always driven by a lean, dark Mexican in wide sombrero, wrapped to his chin in a heavy zarape of red or blue. It is a warm day when a Mexican relaxes his zarape.

We spent a long time consulting the various authorities about the antiquity of the churches near. There was a preponderance of opinion favoring Senecu. At last I've learned that Dr. Alexander had thought so; that settled it; to Senecu we would go. But there was much uncertainty about the distance. Some people thought it was forty miles, some thought it was twenty and others thought it was ten. There was also much variety of opinion about the road and direction. But we finally decided to try a very inviting road which led us between rows of old, old houses, and past orchards of gnarled old pear trees that seemed to have been there for so many centuries that they surely must lead to tile very oldest church.

Now and then the road crossed an acequia of muddy, yellow water, always fringed on both banks with rough, twisted old cottonwood trees, from which the tops are cut every year for firewood. Ranches spread out to the right and the left of us, often with great one storied adobe buildings partly ruined and desolate looking, in the midst of blooming almond and peach trees. Puddles made from irrigation filled the road in places, adding a rich brown to the buff color of the country, for the adobe soil when wet is very dark.

Now and then we passed a Mexican plowing the sand. It seemed unnecessary, it is so light; but it raises very fine sweet potatoes and chile if they do not blow away. Frequently, although a little afraid to let so many Mexicans know where we were going, we would stop a picturesque rugged senor and inquire the way to Senecu. His sombrero would come off instantly, his "Si Senora," in gracious tones, would be accompanied by graceful salutation, and after imparting all he knew he would bid us "Adios" with a very fine bow.

At last a large adobe mass loomed up against the southeastern horizon. At first it was purple across the pale yellow sand; then it became yellow, too, as we approached and came up on its lighted side. It looked very new and fresh.

Could Dr. Alexander have been mistaken? It would be very mortifying to come twenty miles to sketch a new church. We entered the immaculate walled enclosure in front of it feeling very despondent, and languidly set up our camp stools. A Mexican woman in a blue cotton zarape looked out of a door in the long building at the side of the church. Presently she came out and leaned over the wall. She was followed by a little girl in a white zarape, and presently a man appeared wearing a very wide and tall sombrero. They were soon joined by three more men, and they all regarded us from a distance. The houses of the village, windowless squares of adobe, were scattered about in the fields, long spaces apart. The people, one by one, congregated by the wall. It began to look very serious for us. They all wore very fierce-looking sombreros.

"Would you have nerve enough to use the pistol do you think?" I asked our smallest but most valiant member. "Certainly," she answered with alacrity, "but I think I will leave it in the buggy until we need it."

"Yes, indeed, for it might go off," we all said. We finally thought best to approach the Mexicans and explain ourselves. Of course we all knew Spanish. Whenever in Mexico you address native in that tongue, and he doesn't understand you, you can set him down as an Aztec.

These people were Aztecs evidently. But we had recourse to the sketch books, which explained themselves. American senoras had seldom come to their village, so they comprehended at once that we were after a view of the church. Probably it had never been sketched before, for Senecu is a lost little place so far away over the sand hills that even the artists never heard of it.

The key of the church was a mile away, but a fine old Mexican, who looked like a Spanish Don, volunteered to take his horse and go after it. He rode off gracefully and came back in a few minutes to usher us inside. The entire population of the village followed us in. It was a very bare interior; a floor of adobe tramped as solid as stone, with many little niches containing images and holy water, and a few square unglazed windows, high up in the thick, whitewashed walls.

The usual tomb of Christ, made of window glass and thin pieces of wood and covered with a pall of window-curtain lace, stood near the altar and contained the antique-painted wooden figure always seen in Mexican churches, and which, at certain seasons, is hung on the large cross that usually rests against the choir loft.

The ceiling was of square cedar beams painted roughly in black and dark blue to represent carving. Perhaps the people who showed us through were some of them descended from the Aztecs who did this quaint work. They were all idolaters then and worshipped the sun god, while now they worship the image of Mary, which is a very different thing. In this church the old images seemed to have the dust of ages upon them, and one can readily imagine them to have been brought here by the Franciscan Monks long before the settlement at Jaurez. In the little, dark sacristy are some very strange wooden figures, little pottery saints, and a number of large ollas besides silver candlesticks and a carved chest filled probably with vestments. The old doors were very massive and moved on wooden hinges.

In the meantime a young Mexican boy had taken our horse away and fed and watered him, and brought him back and tied him in a nice shady place. One of us expressed a desire for "agua" and a pretty little Indian girl brought us some very cold out of a clean, new olla. Another little Indian girl gave uS a baked clay dish, presenting it as sweetly as a little princess would present a flower; perhaps she was a little princess - a little Aztec princess. The Mexican boy who had fed our horse then escorted us over the village into the justice's court (his father was the presidente municipal) where he showed us a carved desk filled with yellow old documents, and into the school house (his brother was the teacher) where we saw some very excellent writing of the the pupils, and saw their long benches, and tattered primers printed in the City of Mexico. He showed us some fine, large paper flowers executed by his mother, and a likeness of that excellent saint, Guadalupe, done by himself when in school in Chihuahua. At last it grew late, and we all said "Adios" with much handshaking. We climbed into the buggy, being careful not to disarramge the gossamer that covered our artillery; drove regretfully away, and as we turned out of sight looked back and saw them still standing there, the old Don holding up the little princess.

We came home in the beautiful late afternoon sunlight. The sky was gray blue with tiny clouds. Waco Range, on our right, was pink in the distance. Mexicans returning home with their unladen groups of donkeys, usually sitting far back on one of them, greeted us with pleasant "Buenos tardes." One of the donkeys had a cow bell fastened to its neck. We long heard its tinkle far away in the chill air. The adobe walls against the Sun had a great deal of rose color in their shadows, and the many little pools toward the west were golden as the light dropped lower. The sand shone against the sun like silk, and the mesquite seemed more grotesque, rising out of the brightness. When arrived home and compared authorities, we were delighted to learn that Dr. Alexander was not mistaken, and that the church at Senecu is the very oldest church.