On this trail to Santa Fe, there are several small Pueblos which are inhabited by the descendants of the ancient Aztecs.  These settlements, generally, are quite thrifty, and exhibit many external appearances of comfort.  To prepare and cultivate the soil, it takes much labor in irrigating and bestowing other farming operations upon the land in order to bring crops to perfection.  Hence these people, like the New Mexicans, can realize from their toil but little beyond their own subsistence.  This trail, as it approaches Santa Fe, enters through groves of small pines which are many miles in extent.  In such places the ground is sandy and the vegetation poor in the extreme.  It has proved an exceedingly difficult problem, for more than one mind, to solve the reason why the capital of the Territory should have been located in such a barren section of the country.  Perhaps it was because this was the most central spot that could be selected, although such a reason can hardly be offered in sober earnestness.  The most charitable reasoning which we can offer for it, is because the Mexicans knew no better.  It is true there are valuable silver mines near by; but this could only cause a town to be raised to suit the miners and not to form the attraction where the elite of New Mexican society should for so many years congregate.

Santa Fe is located on a plateau of ground which is about seven thousand feet above the level of the sea.  The town itself contains about five or six thousand inhabitants which includes all races.  It is built of adobes, or sun-burnt brick, and occupies both sides of a small stream which is called the Rio Chicito and which flows into the Rio Grande nearly twenty miles from the town.  The site of Santa Fe is low when compared with the altitude of the surrounding country, being bounded on nearly all sides by lofty mountains.  One of these mountains is quite famous.  It is the loftiest of all in that section of country, and is capped during the greater part of the year with snow.  As is invariably the case with the large majority of Mexican towns, there is but little regularity in the streets of Santa Fe; but yet, the plaza is easily reached by several avenues.  Santa Fe forms the grand commercial emporium of the great interior continent of North America; and its trade diverges to every point of the compass.  The extent of this trade can be realized when we assert the fact that with the State of Missouri alone it amounts annually to several millions of dollars.  In the south it has overland communication even with the city of Mexico.  If the tariff between the two countries could be arranged upon a more equitable footing than it now is, the Mexican trade would swell into an enormous sum.  Every acquisition of a new territory in the far west and southwest aids in developing the commerce of Santa Fe; therefore, until steam shall cause a revolution in the course of trade, this town must necessarily increase greatly in importance.  The