This landlord once upon a day,
     Fell sick and like to die,
   And sent for me as well as the priest,
    Though I could not tell for why.

  "Harry," says he, "I've pisoned the beer,
     'Tis the very truth I've spoke;
   Yet prayed at church on Sabbath-days
     Along with the Christian folk.

  "Why didn't they nail my ears to the post?
     They'd done it in days gone by!
   And perhaps I wouldn t ha' pisoned the poor
     Wi' drugs to make them dry.

  "Wi' drugs to make them wery dry,
     So that the more they drank,
   The more they thirsted and wished to swill
     Like horses at a tank.

  "I'm a sneak, a thief, and a hypocrite,
     And perhaps a murderer, too,
   Though I'm glad to see, 'mid all my sins,
     As I've not murdered you.

  "But when I think on Dick that swung,
     Aloft on the gallows tree,
   I've mortal fear, 'twas the pisoned beer
     That was the ruin of he.

  "And his ghost comes prowling every night,
     And chatters at my bed,
   And when I looks on its dreadful face,
     I wishes that I was dead.

  "And I feel I'm going, Harry," says he,
     "And a wery bad man I've been,
   Though I've made a heap of dirty gold,
     That I wishes I'd never seen.

  "Good bye! good bye! I'm going to die!
     I cannot abear them ghosts
   That come every night with horrid grins,
     Not one, or two, but hosts."

  And this landlord was as good as his word,
     For he died the wery next night,
   And I'm truly glad I was not him,
     For all his guineas bright.

  And it's my opinion, if I'm fit
     To form a judgment clear,
   That the wery worst thing a man can do
     Is to pison the people's beer!

                NATIVE TRIBES OF NEW MEXICO.

                 IN THREE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER III.

CIVILISED man, although he lives by the
destruction of life, animal as well as vegetable,
takes care to reproduce by artificial
means as much as, if not more than, he
destroys; the savage, however, does not
always do this, and when he does not,
surely this is a proof that he is not destined
by Providence permanently to exist.

Most conspicuous amongst the latter
class are the Navajos and Apaches of
New Mexico and Arizona—the hereditary
enemies of the cultivator of the soil, whether
he be Aztec, Mexican, or Anglo-Saxon—
the savages, by means of whom the whole
country has been nearly swept of its
inhabitants, and changed from a fertile garden
into a barren waste.

The Navajos, until lately, occupied a fine
tract of country watered by the Colorado,
Chiquito, and San Juan rivers and their
tributaries, as well as by some of the western
branches of the Rio Grande. They were
bounded on the north by the Utah nation,
on the south by the Apaches, on the west
by the Moqui and Zuni pueblos, and on
the east by the inhabitants of the Rio
Grande valley. Although often placed
under the head of Apaches, they are in
every respect a different and a finer race.
They are bold and defiant, with full lustrous
eyes, and a sharp, intelligent expression of
countenance; they had fixed abodes in
their country, around which they raised
crops almost rivalling those of the Pimas
on the Gila: they carried one art—the
weaving of blankets---to a state of perfection
which, in closeness of texture and
arrangement of colour, is scarcely excelled
even by the laboured and costly seraphes
of Mexico and South America. I tried at
Santa Fé to purchase some, but the prices
were so enormous, averaging from seventy
to one hundred dollars for choice specimens,
that I refrained. For love of
plunder and rapine, these Indians have no
equals. Their number, twenty years ago,
was probably about twelve thousand, and
while they left their wives and old men to
plant, reap, attend to the stock, and make
blankets, the braves spent their lives in
traversing the whole country, carrying off
the stock of the helpless Mexican farmers,
and keeping the entire agricultural and
mining population in a constant state of
alarm. To give a slight idea of the
depredations of these hordes, I may state that
between August 1, 1846, and October 1,
1850, there were stolen by them, according
to the report of the United States Marshals,
no less than twelve thousand eight hundred
and eighty-seven mules, seven thousand and
fifty horses, thirty-one thousand five hundred
and eighty-one horned cattle, and four
hundred and fifty-three thousand two hundred
and ninety-three head of sheep. The official
reports from New Mexico appeared to
contain nothing but catalogues of depredations
committed by the Navajos, or of similar
deeds done by the Apaches; and not only
was the valley of the Rio Grande swept over
and over again of its stock, but the Pueblo
Indians of Zuñi, and many other native
towns, barely escaped destruction.

Governor Charles Bent thus spoke of
them in 1846: "The Navajos are an
industrious, intelligent, and warlike race of
Indians, who cultivate the soil, and raise
sufficient grain and fruits of various kinds
for their own consumption. They are the
owners of large herds and flocks of cattle,