of the snow, lay the little village, resembling an oriental town, with its low, square, mud-roofed houses and its two square church towers, also of mud. On the path to the village were a few Mexicans, wrapped in their striped blankets, and driving their jackasses heavily laden with wood towards the village. Such was the aspect of the place at a distance. On entering it, you found only a few dirty, irregular lanes, and a quantity of mud houses. To an American the first sight of these New Mexican villages is novel and singular. He seems taken into a different world. Everything is new, strange, and quaint: the men with their pantalones of cloth, gaily ornamented with lace, split up on the outside of the leg to the knee, and covered at the bottom with a broad strip of morocco; the jacket of calico; the botas of stamped and embroidered leather; the zarape or blanket of striped red and white; the broad-brimmed hat, with a black silk handkerchief tied round it in a roll; or in the lower class, the simple attire of breeches of leather reaching only to the knees, a shirt and a zarape; the bonnetless women, with a silken scarf or a red shawl over their heads; and, added to all, the continual chatter of Spanish about him--all remind him that he is in a strange land. On the evening after my arrival in the village I went to a fandango. I saw the men and women dancing waltzes and drinking whiskey together; and in another room I saw the monti-bank open. It is a strange sight, a Spanish fandango. Well dressed women--they call them ladies--priests, thieves, half-breed Indians--all spinning round together in a waltz. Here a filthy, ragged fellow with half a shirt, a pair of leather breeches, long, dirty woollen stockings, and Apache moccasins, was whirling round with the pretty wife of Pedro Vigil. I was soon disgusted; but among the graceless shapes and more graceless dresses at the fandango I saw one young woman who appeared to me exceedingly pretty. She was under the middle size, slightly formed; and, besides the delicate foot and ancle and the keen black eye common to all the women in that country, she possessed a clear and beautiful complexion, and a modest, downcast look not often to be met with among the New Mexican females. I was informed to my surprise that she had been married several years before, and was now a widow. There was an air of gentle and deep melancholy in her face which drew my attention to her; but when one week afterward I left Taos, and went down to Santa Fé, the pretty widow was forgotten.