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.