TRAILBLAZERS

In the spring of 1848 George Brewerton, a United States naval officer who found himself in California at the conclusion of the Mexican War, took an overland route home via the Old Spanish Trail. On the way, his smaller party overtook and passed one of the last trade caravans that gave the trail its early importance. He later published this eyewitness account.

"This caravan consisted of some two or three hundred Mexican traders who go once a year to the Californian coast with a supply of blankets and other articles of New Mexican manufacture; and having disposed of their goods, invest the proceeds in Californian mules and horses, which they drive back across the desert. These people often realize large profits, as the animals purchased for a mere trifle on the coast, bring high prices in Santa Fe."

Brewerton wrote that the caravan included nearly 1,000 animals, which "ate up or destroyed the grass and consumed the water at the few camping grounds upon the route."

"Imagine upward of two hundred Mexicans dressed in every variety of costume, from the embroidered jacket of the wealthy Californian, with its silver bell-shaped buttons, to the scanty habiliments of the skin-clad Indian, and you may form some faint idea of their dress.

"Their caballada contained not only horses and mules, but here and there a stray burro destined to pack wood across the rugged hills of New Mexico. Š ...

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