Read "The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas" by Frederick Marryat online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
At last we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to Santa Fe. Much hath been written about this rich and romantic city, where formerly, if we were to believe travellers, dollars and doubloons were to be had merely for picking them up; but I suspect the writers had never seen the place, for it is a miserable, dirty little hole, containing about three thousand souls, almost all of them half-bred, naked, and starved. Such is Santa Fe. You will there witness spectacles of wretchedness and vice hardly to be found elsewhere -- harsh despotism; immorality carried to its highest degree, with drunkenness and filth.
The value of the Santa Fe trade has been very much exaggerated. This town was formerly the readiest point to which goods could be brought overland from the States to Mexico; but since the colonization of Texas it is otherwise. The profits also obtained in this trade are far from being what they used to be. The journey from St. Louis (Missouri) is very tedious, the distance being about twelve hundred miles, nor is the journey ended when you reach Santa Fe, as they have to continue to Chihuahua. Goods come into the country at a slight duty, compared to that payable on the coast, five hundred dollars only (whatever may be the contents), being charged upon each waggon; and it is this privilege which supports the trade. But the real market commences at Chihuahua; north of which nothing is met with by the traveller, except the most abject moral and physical misery.