A Sportsman 359 



climate, and abounds in many mineral springs of 

 undoubted curative qualities. 



Could the ancient history of the region, now un- 

 known excepting from the traces left, be recorded, it 

 would be most interesting, as probably with the lower 

 part of Colorado; judging from the ruins of large 

 stone community buildings, cave-dwellings, towers on 

 commanding hills, and extensive irrigating canals 

 and aqueducts, it was likely at one time to have been 

 more densely settled by the predecessors of the pres- 

 ent Pueblo Indians, known as the Anahuacs and Tol- 

 tecs, estimated by the great Von Humboldt in his 

 Systeme du Monde to have settled here in the year 

 648 and to have flourished in this region for several 

 centuries. 



From these descended the Aztecs, who, in the 

 eleventh century, founded the City of Mexico at 

 Lake Tezcuco, as found by Cortez at the time of 

 the Spanish invasion. This conclusion was also ar- 

 rived at by the early chronicler Abb6 Clavigero, 

 from the established traditions of Mexico that the 

 south-flowing immigration into Mexico, and beyond 

 to the land of the Incas, proceeded from the region 

 now known as New Mexico and Arizona. Here Coro- 

 nado, the [lieutenant of Cortez, made his famous 

 expediton, in 1540, in search of the traditional king- 

 dom and seven cities of Cibola, where greater wealth 

 was expected to be obtained. 



But this is not a history of New Mexico and Arizona, 

 of which I could give many pages, and have given 

 elsewhere in publications. 



The numerous cave-dwellings, difficult of approach, 

 and the watch-towers, and numerous ruins of buildings 



