Explore "The Trail-Hunter" by Gustave Aimard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
About a month after the events we have described in the first part of this veracious history, two horsemen, well mounted, and carefully enwrapped in their cloaks, entered at a smart trot the town of Santa Fe between three and four o'clock in the afternoon.
Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, is a pretty town, built in the midst of a laughing and fertile plain. One of its sides occupies the angle formed by a small stream: it is surrounded by the _adobe_ walls of the houses by which it is bordered. The entrance of each street is closed by stakes in the form of palisades; and like the majority of towns in Spanish America, the houses, built only one story high in consequence of the earthquakes, are covered with terraces of well-beaten earth, called _azoteas,_ which are a sufficient protection in this glorious climate, where the sky is constantly pure.