The civilized imagination can hardly conceive such a tableau of savagery as that presented by these Arabs of the great American desert. Arabs! The similitude is a calumny on the descendants of Ishmael; the fiercest Bedouin are refined and mild compared with the Apaches. Even the brutal and criminal classes of civilization, the pugilists, roughs, burglars, and pickpockets of our large cities, the men whose daily life is rebellion against conscience, commandment, and justice, offer a gentler and nobler type of character and expression than these "children of nature." There was hardly a face among that gang of wild riders which did not outdo the face of Texas Smith in degraded ferocity. Almost every man and boy was obviously a liar, a thief, and a murderer. The air of beastly cruelty was made even more hateful by an air of beastly cunning. Taking color, brutality, grotesqueness, and filth together, it seemed as if here were a mob of those malignant and ill-favored devils whom Dante has described and the art of his age has painted and sculptured. It is possible, by the way, that this appearance of moral ugliness was due in part to the physical ugliness of features, which were nearly without exception coarse, irregular, exaggerated, grotesque, and in some cases more like hideous masks than like faces. Ferocity of expression was further enhanced by poverty and squalor. The mass of this fierce cavalry was wretchedly clothed and disgustingly dirty. Even the showy Mexican costume of Manga Colorada was ripped, frayed, stained with grease and perspiration, and not free from sombre spots which looked like blood. Every one wore the breech-cloth, in some cases nicely fitted and sewed, in others nothing but a shapeless piece of deerskin tied on anyhow. There were a few, either minor chiefs, or leading braves, or professional dandies (for this class exists among the Indians), who sported something like a full Apache costume, consisting of a helmet-shaped cap with a plume of feathers, a blanket or _serape_ flying loose from the shoulders, a shirt and breech-cloth, and a pair of long boots, made large and loose in the Mexican style and showy with dyeing and embroidery. These boots, very necessary to men who must ride through thorns and bushes, were either drawn up so as to cover the thighs or turned over from the knee downward, like the leg-covering of Rupert's cavaliers. Many heads were bare, or merely shielded by wreaths of grasses and leaves, the greenery contrasting fantastically with the unkempt hair and fierce faces, but producing at a distance an effect which was not without sylvan grace.