It was the spell which that old town loves to throw over the strangers who venture off the beaten track to come within her walls.
Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy (a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the trouble to stop over to visit it.

"Dead old town," says the commercial traveller, "nothing doing there." And it is true.
But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic town.
The Governor's Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the antiquated customs, the Sisters' Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all.
There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone peacefully on, through winter and summer alike.

There was no cold, no heat, but a delightful year-around climate.

Why the place was not crowded with health seekers, was a puzzle to me.

I had thought that the bay of San Francisco offered the most agreeable climate in America, but, in the Territory of New Mexico, Santa Fe was the perfection of all climates combined.
The old city lies in the broad valley of the Santa Fe Creek, but the valley of the Santa Fe Creek lies seven thousand feet above the sea level.