The Days of a Man 



D898 



A furious 

 ride 



Enca7itada by our party, but he met an unexpected 

 obstacle in the superstitious opposition of the 

 authorities of Acoma. He was therefore obhged to 

 ride twenty-five miles to Laguna and back, to ap- 

 peal to his old friend, Solomon Bibo, the local store- 

 keeper, an adopted member of the tribe and formerly 

 governor of the pueblo, before the necessary per- 

 mission was accorded. Major Pradt now furnished 

 the six ladders used by Hodge and kindly consented 

 to go along. The local missionary, Mr. Lukens, in 

 whose house my wife and I had lodged for a night, 

 then attached himself to the party, as did also seven 

 Indians from Acoma. 



At the top of the talus, shallow niches dug with 

 our knives in the soft red rock afforded support for 

 the ladders, all six of which were needed to enable 

 us to ascend the first precipice. A little higher up 

 a rise of five feet only was easily surmounted; but 

 above this rose the most difficult stretch of all, an 

 almost perpendicular cliff thirty-five feet high, and 

 Precarious at Its basc the ladders rested most precariously in 1 

 our niches on the slanting rock. Extra care being ; 

 therefore imperative, Roberts and Stephenson 1 

 climbed up ahead with ropes about their waists 

 so that we might hold them in case the ladders 

 slipped and let them fall. Reaching the top they 

 anchored these securely, after which the rest of us, 

 each also protected by a rope, went up in turn. 

 From then on we encountered no difficulty, and 

 easily finished the trip, little Turbese, six years old, 

 being the first to set foot on the mesa floor. Our 

 record as to time, it may interest some to know, 

 was two hours and ten minutes — • about the same 

 as that of Hodge and his companions. We had, of 



i:634n 



hold 



