PHOTOGRAPHS OF SOME OF THE INSCRIPTIONS 

 ON EE MORRO, NEW MEXICO, 



BY HOMER E. HOOPES, 



WITH TRANSLATIONS AND NOTES, 



BY HENRY L. BROOMALL. 



In western New Mexico, fifty miles southwest of Grant's 

 Station and about forty southeast of Gallup Station on the 

 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, and about thirty 

 miles east of Zuili, stands a sandstone mesa known to the 

 Spanish pioneers as El Morro and to their Anglo-American 

 successors as Inscription Rock. Its physical appearance, sug- 

 gestive of tower and battlement, is the source of its Spanish 

 name, equivalent to "the castle." Its prosaic English name 

 refers to the inscriptions carved on its available face in the 

 days of the Spanish regime. 



This rock lies on an ancient route between New and Old 

 Mexico. Its position on the way from Zuiii to the Rio Grande, 

 and the water, wood and shelter which its surroundings then 

 gave, made it a usual halting place. The vertical plane of the 

 north face of the rock and of the south face at a re-entering 

 angle of the eastern side afforded a smooth, fine-grained sur- 

 face at about a man's height from the base and protected from 

 rapid weathering by the overhanging cliff. Here the soldiers 

 and padres of the Spanish expeditions of the 17th and iSth 

 Centuries inscribed their names, titles, dates and deeds. 



The first published study of these inscriptions was made 

 under the direction of Lieutenant J. H. Simpson, of the Corps 

 of Topographical Engineers, United States Army, in 1849. 

 His report is contained in " Reports of the Secretary of War, 

 Ex. Doc. No. 64, I St Session, 31st Congress," published in 

 1850, and consists of lithographic plates from drawings of the 

 inscriptions made by himself and R. H. Kern and translations 

 made by " the conjoint assistance of Chief Justice J. Hough- 



