Autumn has come, and the two adventurers of whose reception we have spoken in the last chapter are still guests, kindly treated and waiting for the guide to give the signal of departure for the south.  A few days the old man had said,—­in a few days he would himself go to the southern pueblos of his tribe.  But upon the rabbit-hunts there followed ceremonial dances which lasted for days, and Hayoue and Zashue could not leave until they were over.  Then it required several days to rest and to perform certain rites, and Zashue and Hayoue could not leave on that account.  Furthermore, Zashue being Koshare, the Koshare of the Tanos held him back for certain performances of their own, and Hayoue could not or would not start alone.  Afterward, Hayoue being Cuirana, the Cuirana held something in store for him, and Zashue did not care to start without his brother.  And when all that was finished the old man was not ready; and so they are waiting and waiting, and autumn is here in all its beauty, and Hayoue and Zashue, Zashue as well as Hayoue, begin to chafe; but it is of no avail; they must wait.

While they are thus waiting until it pleases their friend to start, we shall precede them to that south which is their objective point, in order to anticipate if possible the cravings of the two adventurous young men.  They may overtake us there, perhaps when we least expect it.

* * * * *

About thirty miles south of Santa Fe, the southern rim of the so-called Basin of Galisteo is bounded by a low and shaggy ridge running from east to west, whose crest is formed of trap-dyke sharply though irregularly dentated.  In Spanish this ridge and another similar one which traverses the plain several miles north of it, running parallel to the former, is called very appropriately El Creston, for if seen from a distance and edgewise it strikingly resembles the crest of an antique helmet.  The plain of Galisteo expands between crestones, and on the edges of it stand several villages of the Tanos.  Of the Galisteo Basin a Spanish report from the sixteenth century says:  “There they have no stream; neither are there any running brooks nor any springs which the people could use.”

The mountain clusters of the Real de Dolores and Sierra de San Francisco, and beyond these the high Sandia chain, divide the Galisteo country from the valley of the Rio Grande in the west.  To the south there extends a dreary plain as far as the salt marshes of the Manzano; eastward spread the wooded slopes of the plateau; above the Pecos border upon the basin.  To the north the plain rises gradually, traversed only by the northern creston, until it merges into the plain of Santa Fe.