6/2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the fingers of the builders, showing even the fine lines of the tex- 

 ture of the skin, and in one or more places the impress of a complete 

 hand. Their hands appear to have been smaller than the average. 

 Indeed, everything tends to show that this was a race of small stature. 



To gain access to these elevated abodes, the people made use of 

 ladders, and of niches which they cut in the rocks. 



The amount of labor involved in the construction of these towns 

 was, for a people so absolutely dependent on their own unaided labor, 

 enormous. In some of the cliff-houses, the stones had to be carried 

 for hundreds of feet, up precipitous walls, where the only footing was 

 by holes which they had cut in the rock. All the stone used in the 

 enormous buildings at Aztec Spring was brought from the foot of a 

 cliff fully a mile away, and this without the aid of beasts of burden. 



Fragments of pottery are found everywhere. Indeed, it is slight 

 exaggeration to say that the plateaus are paved with them. One may 

 ride for miles with the constant accompaniment of the ring of the 

 horse's hoof against the relics of the ancients. The amount of pottery 

 which this people used was enormous. It would seem that careless 

 servants are not among the innovations of the nineteenth century. 

 Few whole vessels have been found ; few, even, of large fragments. 

 These vessels are variously ornamented. The surfaces of some are 

 corrugated, apparently with the thumb-nail ; on some, raised figures 

 are seen ; others, and these are by far the most abundant, are glazed, 

 and covered with all conceivable figures, rudely painted. 



The pottery resembles very much that made by the Moquis and 

 other similar people to-day, but is in many respects superior to it. 

 Arrow-heads seem to have been another staple article of manufacture, 

 judging from the abundance of the specimens. They are made of 

 varieties of quartz ; and beautiful specimens, made of smoky quartz, 

 chalcedony, moss agate, and opal, have been found. 



The cemeteries which have been examined present a family resem- 

 blance. The graves, or family lots they may be, are surrounded by 

 flat stones, set on edge in the earth. The little lots thus marked out 

 are rectangular in shape, with sides six to ten feet in length. Several 

 of these were opened, but nothing was found except a little charcoal. 



"With regard to the age of these ruins, and the date of the occupa- 

 tion of this country by these people, little has yet been learned. The 

 erosion of cliffs in the neighborhood of the cliff-houses gives no satis- 

 factory data on which to found an estimate. The cemeteries and some 

 of the ruins are overgi-own by large pines and cedars, some of them a 

 foot or more in diameter. The Moquis and Pueblos have no traditions 

 concerning these people, who were undoubtedly their ancestors. But 

 neither of these facts gives more than the very general idea that the 

 date of their occupation of the country was several centuries ago. 



The ruins are, in many cases, found several miles from the nearest 

 water — a fact which shows conclusively that at the time when these 



