When the day of our departure drew near, I visited my numerous friends to bid them farewell and receive many like wishes in return.  I must own that I felt a pang of sadness when I saw tears well up in the innocent eyes of sweet maidens and saw the fires dimmed in the black orbs of lovely matrons whom I had held often in my arms to the measure and tuneful melody of the fantastic wild fandango; musical Andalusian strains which words cannot describe—­soul-stirring, enchanting, promising and denying, plaintive or jubilant, songs from Heaven or wails from the depths of Hades.  Here I lived the happiest hours of my life, but being young, I did not realize it then.

When I came to the house of Don Reyes Alvarado, who was my chum and bosom friend, and also of like age, he gave me a pleasant surprise.  He informed me that there would be a dance at the Hancho Indian’s settlement that same night, one of those ceremonial events which I had long desired to attend in order to study the customs and habits of these descendants of the Aztecs.  Their social dances are inspired by ancient customs and are the outbursts of the dormant, barbaric rites of a religion which these people were forced to abandon by their conquering masters, the Spaniards.  Outwardly and visibly Christians, taught to observe the customs of the Roman Catholic Church and to conform to its ritual, these people, who were the scum and overflow from villages of Pueblo Indians, were yet Aztec heathens in the consciousness of their souls and inclination of their hearts.

Shortly after sunset we were on our way to the sand dunes of the Rio Grande, where these poor outcasts had squatted and built their humble homes of terron, or sod, which they cut from the alkali-laden soil of the vega.  They held their dance orgies in the estufa, the meeting house of the tribe.  This was a long, low structure built of adobe, probably a hundred feet long and nine feet wide, inside measure.  The building was so low that I could easily lay the palm of my uplifted hand against the ceiling of the roof, which was made of beams of cottonwood, covered with sticks off which the bark had been carefully peeled, the whole had then been covered with clay a foot in depth.  The floor of this long, low tunnel-like room was made of mud which had been skilfully tampered with an admixture of short cut straw and had been beaten into the proper degree of hardness.  Dampened at intervals, this floor was quite serviceable to dance on.  There were no windows or ventilators in this hall and only one door at the end.  This was made out of a slab of hewn wood and was just high and wide enough to admit a good sized dog.  The hall was brilliantly lighted by a dozen mutton tallow dips, which were distributed about the room in candelabra of tin, hanging on the mud-plastered and whitewashed walls.  The orchestra consisted of one piece only, an ancient war drum, or tombe, and was located at the farther end of the room.  It was beaten by