The Aztec Treasure-House by Thomas A. Janvier

As we fled along the valley, and in a few moments heard the sound of the Indians pursuing us, my mind was chiefly occupied with considerations of the quality which we denominate fear. I perceived that this purely occasional passion had a very direct bearing upon my own especial science of archaeology. I reflected that had I been engaged in building a city at the moment when that irritating flight of arrows fell among us -- -- the sting of one of which I still felt smarting upon my forehead -- -- I should assuredly have ceased at once the building of that city, and should have moved rapidly away. And thus an excellently well-built city, that would have delighted archaeologists of the future, would have been lost to the world. Putting the matter yet more closely: here I had just found the sign for which I and my companions had been toilsomely searching for a considerable time; the sign which unquestionably would lead us to the most interesting archaeological discovery that ever had been made. And yet, instead of stopping to study this sign earnestly, that I might understand all the meaning of it, I was hastening away from it with all possible speed; and for no better reason than that certain barbarians, whose knowledge of archaeology was not even rudimentary, were pursuing me that they might take my life -- an imperfectly expressed concept, by-the-way; for life can be taken only in the limited sense of depriving another of it; it cannot be taken in the full sense of deprivation and acquisition combined. These several reflections so stirred my bile against the Indians in pursuit of us that I began to have a curiously blood-thirsty longing for our actual battling with them to begin; for I was possessed by a most unscientific desire to balance our account by killing several of them. And I confess that this desire was increased as I looked at the dead body of poor Dennis, lying limply across the fore-shoulders of Rayburn's horse.

It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I obeyed Rayburn's order to halt, that we might make ready for the fight to begin. The valley up which we had been riding had narrowed by this time into a strait way shut in between high and nearly perpendicular walls; and the place that Rayburn had chosen for us to make our stand in was the mouth of a canon setting off from the valley nearly at right angles. The walls of this canon came almost together above, far overhanging their bases, so that assault from overhead was impossible; some fragments of fallen rock made a natural breastwork for us to fight behind; and a little stream of pure, sweet water flowed at our feet. Had this place been made for us expressly it could not better have suited our purposes; and finding it so opportunely put fresh heart into us. There was not, of course, a shadow of resemblance between the two, but, somehow, I fancied that the place where we stood resembled my old class-room at Ann Arbor; and I actually found myself repeating the opening sentence of the address that I delivered when I was formally inducted into the Chair of Topical Linguistics. I mention this fact not because it is of the slightest importance in this present narrative, but because I think that it well illustrates the tendency towards illogical association that is so curious a characteristic of the human mind.