Some fifteen miles or so from Fort Garland, in the heart of the San Luis Park, lies San Luis de Culebra, a hamlet of five or six hundred people, and I believe, the most considerable "city," there. You strike the Park proper some distance east of Fort Garland, and from there to Culebra the country is substantially a dead-level. Culebra was then a genuine Mexican town without an atom of the Yankee in or about it, and seemed a thousand years old, it was so sleepy, though comparatively a new settlement. Its houses were all one-story adobes, with chimneys in the corner, in the true Mexican style, and were all grouped about a central "plaza," of course, or the town would not be Mexican. All Southern Colorado, it will be remembered, formerly belonged to New Mexico, and hence these Mexican settlements here and beyond. The people raised wheat, barley, and oats to some extent; but depended on their flocks and herds chiefly for support. We entered Culebra at dark, amidst a multitudinous chorus of dogs, and halted at the house of Capt. D. a bright German, formerly an officer of New Mexican Volunteers, but who had recently married a Culebra señorita and settled there. He gave us an excellent supper, after which we all adjourned to a "baille," or Mexican Ball, gotten up especially in honor of Gen. Sherman and Gov. Cumming, but which Sherman was unable to attend. Several of his staff-officers, however, and the governor were present, and these with the rest of us made up quite a party. These _bailles_ are great institutions among the New Mexicans, who retain all the old Spanish fondness for music and dancing, and are ready for a "baille," any time. The Culebrans had already had two or three that week, but got up the Sherman-Cumming one on short notice and in grand style. The only thing necessary was to engage a room and music, and send a runner through the village, to announce a baille was on the tapis, and the whole population--men, women, children, dogs, and fleas--were sure to be there. At the primitive hour of eight P. M. the people began to assemble, and by nine P. M. the baille was in full blast. The ball-room itself was an adobe building, one-story high, perhaps fifty feet long by thirty wide, with a dirt floor, and seats all around. At the farther end was a rude bar, with a transparency over it, bearing the motto, "Limonade and Egg-nog," at which each cavalier was expected to treat his lady from time to time. Near this was a rough platform for the musicians, who consisted of three or four violinists, led by an irrepressible guitarist--blind and quite a character in his way. As the evening progressed, he worked himself up into an ecstacy of enthusiasm, and then, with his eyes "in fine phrensy rolling," improvised words to every piece they played. He appeared perfectly absorbed and carried away with playing and singing, and when a dance ended seemed quite exhausted. No bone-ist, or tambourine-ist, in a troupe of minstrels east,