That night, for the first time in seven months, I slept upon a mattress, which, according to the custom of New Spain, was laid upon the floor. The nearest approach to a bedstead in this benighted land is a bench-like bank of mud brick along the wall, in some of the houses. Chairs and divans are none too plentiful, even in the homes of the cultured rich, the people in general preferring to recline or to sit Turk-fashion upon mats or mattresses laid along the floor. Early in the morning I was informed that an escort was in waiting to guide me to Santa Fe. The kindness of the commandant in providing me with numerous articles of civilized comfort induced me to accede without protest to his politely worded hint that it would be better for me to leave behind my weapons and ammunition, which he promised to send on in a few days. Having given myself singly into the hands of the Spanish, I knew that diplomacy was now my sole resource, the thought of a resort to force being sheer madness. CHAPTER XX A MESSAGE TO MY LADY During the journey to Santa Fe, while stopping over at the town of San Juan, where I was treated with the utmost warmth of hospitality, I was able to inform myself as to the prosperous condition of the trader Le Lande, who had married and settled in the vicinity. But my apprehensions as to my reception by the Governor of this remote province prevented me from taking as deep an interest either in that rascal or in the strange customs and appearance of these Mexican people as I should have felt in easier circumstances. Unlike Agua Caliente and some of the other small settlements we had passed, I found Santa Fe a town widely scattered in the outskirts. Many of the low adobe buildings which made up the bulk of the place stood each in its tiny patch of field, which, early as was the season, the people were beginning to cultivate with their rude ploughs and mattocks. Within these suburbs, however, the houses crowded closer and closer together, until they were for the most part separated only by streets that were no less narrow and crooked than dirty. A more striking difference between this two-century-old settlement and the ones up-country was the presence of the two huge adobe churches which towered among the hovels, all the more imposing for the contrast. Their windows, like those of the better houses, were glazed with sheets of thin, transparent talc. I was at once taken past the rectangle of the soldiers' barracks to the great open court, or plaza, in the midst of the town, where we came to the house of the Governor. By this time I and my escort were surrounded by a number of _mestizos_ and tame Indians, all of whom, however, drew away when we entered the palace through an open, brick-paved portico, or shed. After the plainness of the exterior, I was astonished by the ornate furnishings of the rooms within, whose limed walls were hung with bright-figured drapes and whose floors of beaten clay were spread with skin rugs.