"A white man," Cecilio continued, "a rebel, had led this band of Indians, and, adding his knowledge of the habits of the white man to the cunning of the savages, but few Americans or Mexicans could escape these fiends. This wretch never erred in the aim he took--a ball through the neck always sending his victim to his last account--but here, on this spot, he had found his match. Some American, whose name the guide had forgotten, had sent a bullet through his traitor's heart, at last; and the Indians, never resting until the brave man had been laid in the dust, then left this region, because, possibly, there was nothing more to destroy." Clearing away the brush and rubbish at our feet, the guide held up his hand--"And here, _señora_," he said,--pointing to two sunken graves marked by pieces of smoothed plank,--"here they are buried side by side: the rebel who led the Indians, and the white man who killed him." It was nothing uncommon to meet with nameless graves in this country; but a thrill passed through my heart, as I looked at these two mounds, where friend and foe slumbered so peacefully, "side by side." It was dangerous to tarry long in one spot, the guide reminded us. The orderly brought Copp and Toby, and we pursued our way through the laughing, blooming valley. Nuts, grapes, and hops grew wild here; and peaches, Cecilio said, grew near the Santa Rita mines, but they had been planted there by the former inhabitants and employés of the mines. The mines originally belonged to a Spanish lady, to whose ancestors seven leagues of the country surrounding them had been granted by the Spanish Government, long before the territory belonged to Uncle Sam. Her representatives had worked the mines with a force of some two hundred men, till the Indians had overpowered them, and destroyed the works. The immense piles of copper-ore, on either side of the road, told us that we were nearing Santa Rita, at last; and there, just at the point of the San José Range, lay a large, strongly-built _adobe_ fort. Buildings of different sizes and kinds lay clustered around this, which appeared to be furnace and fastness at once. Placing sentinels, we commenced exploring above ground; under-ground I refused to venture, in my cowardice. We found works of considerable magnitude; I counted twelve bellows, in a kind of hall, that must have been sixty feet high, but the rafters and beams overhead had rotted, and the weight of the mud, with which all roofs are covered in this country, had borne down the roof, and half covered an enormous wheel, some forty feet in diameter. Everything about this wheel that was not wood, was copper; not a vestige of iron, steel, or stone, was to be seen around here: it was copper, wood, and _adobe_. But copper was everywhere--copper-ore, so rich that the veins running through it could be scraped out with a penknife; copper just smelted; copper beaten into fantastic shapes, as though the