In the money market there is nothing less than a five-cent piece. You cannot purchase anything for less than five cents. In trade they reckon ten cents the eighth of a dollar. If you purchase nominally a dollar's worth of an article, you can pay for it in eight ten-cent pieces; and if you give a dollar, you receive no change. In changing a dollar for you, you would get but eight ten-cent pieces for it.
Yet, although dirty and unkempt, and swarming with hungry dogs, it has the charm of foreign flavour, and like San Antonio retains some portion of the grace which long lingered about it, if indeed it ever forsakes the spot where Spain held rule for centuries, and the soft syllables of the Spanish language are yet heard.
Such was a description of the "drowsy old town" of Santa Fe, sixty-five years ago. Fifteen years later Major W. H. Emory, of the United States army, writes of it as follows:[6]
The population of Santa Fe is from two to four thousand, and the inhabitants are, it is said, the poorest people of any town in the Province. The houses are mud bricks, in the Spanish style, generally of one story, and built on a square. The interior of the square is an open court, and the principal rooms open into it. They are forbidding in appearance from the outside, but nothing can exceed the comfort and convenience of the interior. The thick walls make them cool in summer and warm in winter.
The better class of people are provided with excellent beds, but the poorer class sleep on untanned skins. The women here, as in many other parts of the world, appear to be much before the men in refinements, intelligence, and knowledge of the useful arts. The higher class dress like the American women, except, instead of a bonnet, they wear a scarf over their head, called a reboso. This they wear asleep or awake, in the house or abroad. The dress of the lower classes of women is a simple petticoat, with arms and shoulders bare, except what may chance to be covered by the reboso.
The men who have means to do so dress after our fashion; but by far the greater number, when they dress at all, wear leather breeches, tight around the hips and open from the knee down; shirt and blanket take the place of our coat and vest.