distant sierra to an immense quivering horizon of grass and sky, where
big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of their own
shadows.

Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, small on a boundless
expanse, as if attacking immensity itself. The mounted figures of
vaqueros galloped in the distance, and the great herds fed with all
their horned heads one way, in one single wavering line as far as eye
could reach across the broad potreros. A spreading cotton-wool tree
shaded a thatched ranche by the road; the trudging files of burdened
Indians taking off their hats, would lift sad, mute eyes to the
cavalcade raising the dust of the crumbling camino real made by the
hands of their enslaved forefathers. And Mrs. Gould, with each day's
journey, seemed to come nearer to the soul of the land in the tremendous
disclosure of this interior unaffected by the slight European veneer
of the coast towns, a great land of plain and mountain and people,
suffering and mute, waiting for the future in a pathetic immobility of
patience.

She knew its sights and its hospitality, dispensed with a sort of
slumbrous dignity in those great houses presenting long, blind walls and
heavy portals to the wind-swept pastures. She was given the head of the
tables, where masters and dependants sat in a simple and patriarchal
state. The ladies of the house would talk softly in the moonlight under
the orange trees of the courtyards, impressing upon her the sweetness
of their voices and the something mysterious in the quietude of their
lives. In the morning the gentlemen, well mounted in braided sombreros
and embroidered riding suits, with much silver on the trappings of
their horses, would ride forth to escort the departing guests before
committing them, with grave good-byes, to the care of God at the