280 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



cupies a prominent position on a spur of the mesa. It is 

 thirty-eight by thirty-two feet square, and twenty feet in 

 height, as true and as level as though set by masons. The 

 summit is entirely covered with the work that was built 

 upon it, very evidently for merely defensive purposes, for 

 directly at the foot of the rock at its south side was the 

 habitation of the family. A line of wall forty feet square 

 incloses a space, within which was another building resting 

 against the rock itself, the roof of which served as a means 

 of access to the rock above. Two miles below, where the 

 McElmo comes in, and upon the point of the mesa, are other 

 similar ruins, but built much less regularly. Upon one of the 

 faces of the rock is an inscription, chipped in with some sharp 

 pointed instrument, and covering some sixty square feet of 

 surface. Figures of goats, lizards, and human figures abound, 

 with many hieroglyphical signs. The top of the mesa afford- 

 ed much food for speculation in the interesting remains there 

 discovered. The extreme point was a perfectly flat, level 

 table, fifty by one hundred yards in diameter, with perpen- 

 dicular walls of from fifty to one hundred feet on all sides, 

 excepting the narrow neck which connected it with the main 

 plateau. Across this neck a wall had been built to keep off* 

 either human or beast, and rendered the place perfectly iso- 

 lated. Inside, nearly the whole space was subdivided into 

 small squares and double-walled circles formed by slabs of 

 stone set on edge, each square about three by five feet. The 

 supposition has always been that these were burial places. 

 They were dug down upon to a considerable depth without 

 discovering any remains; and as the soil was thin and light, 

 so that the labor of excavation was easy, a number of the 

 squares were cleaned out to the bed rock beneath, which in 

 some cases was not more than a foot below, but without dis- 

 covering any thing more than that in every case the earth 

 hnd been burned and a thin layer of charcoal remained. 

 The question arises as to whether these people might not 

 have been cremationists. 



The Rio San Juan at the mouth of the McElmo is a 

 stream averaGfino; one hundred feet in width and three to 

 five in depth, flowing in great curves that almost touch upon 

 themselves again, and bordered with dense groves of cotton- 

 wood. The bottoms arc from one to three miles in width, and 



