From Santa Fé a cavalcade of thirty soldiers filled with a spirit of high adventure, fully armed, and mounted on good horses gay with the trappings of that period, set forth on June the twenty-third, 1629. Perea writes that the soldiers were well armed in body, but the eight friars were “much better armed in spirit.” Four hundred extra cavalry horses followed close. Behind came ten wagons on which were loaded all the essentials of food, munitions, and church equipment for such a journey. They took the desert trail, marked out through the ages by the unshod feet of the Indian himself—a trail we of to-day must likewise follow almost as blindly since everywhere its course is blurred by drifting sand. Watchful and wary of ambush, but stirring up great clouds of dust, the cavalcade crossed the Rio Grande, and continued its way southwest. In due time the weary hundred miles or more were covered, and the Peñol was reached. To their relief the Spaniards were given a friendly welcome. Probably the spectacle of such a force, and a still potent memory of the tragedy of the Crag in Oñate’s time caused the Ácomas to reflect, and to conclude that, for the moment at least, discretion was the better part of valor. The friendly reception was gratifying, for as Perea wrote, “by force or by siege it would appear to be impossible to enter the place because of its impregnable site. It is a cliff as high as Mt. Amar in Abasia or the insuperable steep which Alexander won from the Scythians.”[76] Governor Silva and his party continued west. At the Crag Father Ramírez “remained at the avowed peril of his life—though this had been already surrendered in sacrifice unto God—among these so-valiant Barbarians who had on other occasions fought so well that the Spaniards knew to their sorrow the courage and skill of their opponents.” Born at Oaxaca, in the valley of Antequera, Juan Ramírez had taken holy orders in the famous convent of Mexico. There his zeal in religious teaching had brought him distinction, so “that he shed lustre upon the Province” and was chosen to go with others of his Order to New Mexico in 1628. Vetancur expressly says that the march was made on foot over the greater part of the six hundred leagues of the wild country, and that because the supplies for their maintenance, furnished by the Crown, were insufficient, “he and the other Religious lived upon what was given them in charity along the way.”