Comparisons are always invidious, but if there be among the cities of the United States, one that is richer in picturesqueness, in genuine romance, in varied historic, archaeologic and ethnologic interest, than Santa Fe, it has still I think to make good its claims. The distinction of being the oldest town in our country, as has sometimes been claimed, is, however, not Santa Fe’s.[1] Indeed, the exact date of its founding is still subject to some doubt, though the weight of evidence points to 1605. Nor was it even the original white settlement in New Mexico. That honor belongs to the long since obliterated San Gabriel, the site of which was on or near the present-day hamlet of Chamita, overlooking the Rio Grande about 35 miles north of Santa Fe. There in 1598 the conqueror of New Mexico, Don Juan de Oñate (a rich citizen of Zacatecas, and the Spanish husband, by the way, of a granddaughter of Montezuma) established his little capital, maintaining it there until the second town was founded. To this latter place was given the name _La Villa Real de Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís_—the Royal City of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Holy Faith. Naturally that was too large a mouthful for daily use, and it was long ago pared down to just Santa Fe, though Saint Francis never lost his status as the city’s patron. In point of antiquity, the most that can justly be claimed for it is that it is the first permanent white settlement in the West. The situation of Santa Fe is captivating, in the midst of a sunny, breeze-swept plain in the lap of the Southern Rockies, at an elevation of 7000 feet above the sea. Through the middle of the city flows the little, tree-bordered Rio de Santa Fé, which issues a couple of miles away from a gorge in the imposing Sierra Sangre de Cristo (the Mountains of the Blood of Christ), whose peaks, often snow-clad, look majestically down in the north from a height of 10,000 to 13,000 feet. The town is reached from Lamy[2] by a branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which climbs due north for 18 miles through an uninhabitated waste dotted with low-growing piñon, juniper and scrub. At the station a small army of bus, hack and automobile men greet you with enthusiasm, and to reach your hotel you have only the choice of them or your own trotters, for street cars there are none. In Santa Fe, however, no place is far from any other place—the population is but a scant 8500. Of these a large percentage is of Spanish blood, and Spanish speech and Spanish signs engage your attention on every hand.