Mexican laborers at work clearing a part of the oldest eastern section of the ruin at San Pedro 
Viejo. 
The debris thrown out is a mixture of ashes and lumps of adobe from the fallen walls, in and 
under which are buried numerous human skeletons; also various implements, pottery, charred maize, 
and animal bones. View looking northwest 
ANCIENT CITIES OF NEW MEXICO! 
By N. C. Nelson 
ONG before Columbus and _ his 
Norse predecessors set foot on 
American soil there had arisen 
a peculiar type of town-building people 
in the southwestern part of the United 
States. This is a fact which at first 
strikes the observer as_ paradoxical. 
To the modern traveler who hastens 
across New Mexico and. Arizona by 
train or auto, the country seems foreign, 
being apparently devoid of all the forms 
of life familiar to him in the East. He 
sees mostly bare, tawny-colored plains 
and rockbound mesas, interspersed with 
black lava-sheets and flying sand. The 
beds of nearly all of the tortuous 
streams winding through the landscape 
1This article was written by Mr. Nelson on 
November 2, out-of-doors, as he sat on the ruin 
under process of excavation and watched the men 
work. It was despatched to New York the day 
following from Camp Pueblo Pasko, Sante Fé, 
the expedition’s immediate base of operations in 
New Mexico. The illustrations in this article 
and the following are from photographs by Mr. 
Nelson.— Tue Epitor. 
are dry and lifeless and he conse- 
quently deems the whole region a desert 
waste incapable of supporting human 
existence. 
This estimate is only partially correct 
however, for while the southwest is arid 
and desert-like it is nevertheless far 
from infertile. Natural oases exist in 
this, as in other deserts, and artificial 
oases can be and have been created and 
maintained, from early aboriginal days 
to the present. In this region the ruins 
indicative of former life number tens 
of thousands. Not only this but the 
particular environmental conditions ob- 
taining here, and which appear so un- 
favorable, have produced, in a certain 
sense, the highest type of native American 
culture that we have within the limits 
of the United States. In speaking of 
the Southwest therefore, two outstand- 
ing factors, viz., aridity and fertility, 
must always be mentioned in conjunc- 
tion. These two factors have wrought 
389 
