108 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Cottonwood trees, the}^ might almost 

 23ass unnoticed, or be thought mereh' 

 a part of tlie adjacent cliff. They re- 

 mind one of scenes in Palestine, and 

 the solitary shepherd surrounded by his 

 sheep on the bare hillside, or the old 

 woman going to the stream with her 

 water jug, serves to enhance the illu- 

 sion. It strikes 

 the newcomer 

 oddly to find 

 that English is 

 seldom spoken 

 in these towns, 

 the ]\Ioxican 

 language pre- 

 vailing every- 

 where excei)t in 

 the larger cen- 

 ters. 



'i'he Indian 

 villages, how- 

 ever, so often 

 perched on the 

 tops of inac- 

 cessible mesas, 

 are much more 

 strikingly pic- 

 turesque, while 

 the Indian wo- 

 men are like 

 birds of bright- 

 colored plu- 

 mage as they 

 dart in and out 

 of their door- 

 ways or climb the ladders with jars of 

 painted pottery on their heads. Their 

 love of brilliant hues in their dress con- 

 trasts with the taste in garb shown by 

 the Mexican woman, Avho is usually 

 clad in somber black with a shawl of 

 the same color thrown over her head. 

 One's imagination tries to picture the 

 old life of these Indian women when 

 they occupied the rows of caves or the 

 cliff dwellings which line the walls of 



This ancient Indian guardhouse, built under an over- 

 hanging ledge high up in the cliff, is not so easy of 

 access as it would appear from the picture. In fact. 

 I almost gave up trying to reach it across the steep face 

 of the rock. It is neatly finished inside, but is too 

 small to have been used as a dwelling 



the Frijoles Caiion near Santa Fe. I 

 still see that ceremonial chamber high 

 up in the cliff, with its three long shaky 

 ladders, where I confess that my cour- 

 age failed me ere I reached the top. 



Kuined villages, the search for which 

 led us all over northwestern New Mex- 

 ico, seem in great part at least to be 

 situated in the 

 most pictur- 

 esque localities; 

 so while the In- 

 dian ma}^ have 

 selected his 



dwelling place 

 with many other 

 tilings in view, 

 1 for one am 

 convinced that 

 he had an eye 

 for the beauty 

 (>r his sur- 

 roundings. I 

 feel grateful to 

 him for this, 

 since in this 

 way we also 

 \\-ere brought 

 to these spots. 

 From a place 

 called the 



"Point of Mai 

 Pais," we trav- 

 eled for miles 

 through the An- 



gostura, a nar- 

 row rocky caiion with stupendous cliffs 

 on one side and the black lava flow 

 on the other, to emerge at evening 

 into a beautiful meadow where we 

 found a spring of . water and luscious 

 grass for the horses. We camped in a 

 sheltered rincon near a natural sand- 

 stone bridge of great beauty. Oppo- 

 site, across the valley, was another won- 

 derful rock formation resembling a 

 oreat cathedral. As the sun sank be- 



