Sometimes our way crossed or followed ancient trails marked out by the invading Spanish pioneers, who must have been amazed at the similarity of this country to their mother land of Spain, and more particularly of Aragón. Between Zuñi and Ácoma we were actually on the first path ever trodden by the feet of white men in this Southwestern country. Then were brought forth from the master’s brief-case precious, and as yet unpublished, translations of old diaries. Great was our excitement to learn that on these trails may still be found the water holes so accurately described three centuries ago for the guidance of those who should come after. Distances were so carefully measured and noted that to-day they are affirmed to be correct by men living in the region. Experiences such as these kept us all in an enchanted atmosphere. We seemed like actors in an ancient story of exploration rather than people surrounded by present-day events. As we read these diaries upon the very route they detail, there seemed to pass before our eyes in its integrity that strange company of soldiers and priests, well armed and well mounted, followed by the crowd of half-hypnotized, half-terrified natives. Little the Spaniards recked of the hardships of the way; what they saw was Opportunity, Fortune, denied them in the old world they had left. We felt again how, in the virginal wilderness, lured forward by a vision of that “Beyond” where lay a treasure of unstinted gold—gold of the field, gold of the unplumbed rock, gold of souls saved from everlasting death—each man had been led by his individual imagination and by the great general Hope, on and on, undaunted, “to seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.” Caught by the glamour of the buoyant air, we, far-away inheritors of those “dreamers, dreaming greatly,” realized how much our country owes to them, men of an alien race and breed, in that along with their pursuit of material gain, great ideals were held aloft. Lines of Kipling’s verse were borne hauntingly on the breeze: “came the whisper, came the vision, came the Power with the Need”.... “It’s God’s present to our nation. Anybody might have found it, but His whisper came to”—Spain. Chapter II THE CITADEL OF ÁCOMA Ácoma is in point of site not only the most remarkable but the most ancient of New Mexico pueblos to-day ... a formidable cliff in an exceptional situation, a site isolated and impregnable to Indian warfare.—BANDELIER.