566 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



place." Here in a break of the canyon wall the Forest 

 Service has built a safe and satisfactory trail down to 

 the creek below. The men of the Forest Service dare 

 to dream that some day an appreciative Congress will 

 give them the money with which to construct a wide 

 wagon road here down which teams and autos may pass 

 with safety and ease. 



Half a mile up the canyon from the bottom of the 

 trail we find, under a group of pines, a delightful cami)- 

 ing place with plenty of 

 grass for the animals, wood 

 for fires and ice cold water 

 in the creek that babbles 

 not ten feet from us. What 

 more could one ask for in 

 a camp? 



That night the full moon 

 crept quietly over the rim 

 of the canyon lighting up 

 inch by inch the wonderful 

 Wdiis where, hundreds of 

 years ago, these dead and 

 gone peoples dwelt in 

 peace and contentment. As 

 we sat about the campfire 

 we tried to visualize the 

 scenes in the long gone 

 days when each of these 

 rocky rooms had its ten- 

 ant. The children played 

 in the same moonlight that 

 was now bathing every 

 nook and comer of the 

 canyon, dogs barked, the 

 coyotes howled back their 

 shrill defiance, and the fires 

 glowed cheerfully as the 

 women baked their thin 

 sheets of corn bread or 

 boiled the corn meal mush 

 for the morrow's festivities 

 just as the women of the 

 pueblos in this region do 

 today. 



The campfire dies down, 

 our white tent looks ghost- 

 ly and uncanny in the deep 

 shadows of the trees, half 

 a dozen coyotes split the 

 cool evening air with their "yap, yap, yap," and from 

 down the canyon some lone wolf makes the night vocal 

 with his long mournful howl, while the dogs at the camp 

 below us bark their loudest at these skulkers of the 

 forest. 



How good the camp bed feels as we turn in, weary 

 with the day's ride ; we plan the morrow's trips of in- 

 vestigation yawn now who's that chopping wood at 

 such an unearthly hour? Why can't these forest rangers 

 wait till its morning to do such things? What; morn- 



SOME OF THE ROOMS WERE WALLED IN FRONT AS THIS 

 ONE HAS BEEN RESTORED 



Within this room a well-known American authoress wrote one of her 

 most interesting books. 



ing? Nonsense, surely not? But there's the sun peep- 

 ing over the mountain above to prove the night has 

 passed all too quickly. An hour later we are ready for 

 the day's explorations. 



One scarcely knows where to begin there are so many 

 points of interest to see. Here is a scattered ruin that, 

 by its debris, musi have been five or six stories high in 

 places, the building of which must have been a labor of 

 no mean proportions. There thousands of rooms have 



been bored into the rocky 

 walls, some of them ten or 

 twelve feet square, and, if 

 the theories of those who 

 have studied it are correct 

 and everything indicates 

 they are some of the 

 rooms must have been used 

 in a series of stories one 

 above the other and reach- 

 ed by log ladders. A line 

 of small holes, each about 

 six inches in diameter, and 

 bored into the rock per- 

 haps a foot which runs 

 above many of these rooms 

 is presumed to have been 

 used by placing in each hole 

 a long cedar or pine post 

 which at its further end 

 rested upon a cross pole 

 supported at each end by 

 a forked post set into the 

 ground. This was then cov- 

 ered with grass and other 

 materials on top of which 

 earth was placed, thus form- 

 ing a roof for one story 

 and a floor for the other. 



Most of the openings into 

 these rooms are from three 

 to four feet high by two 

 and a half wide and often 

 are carried back several 

 feet before the room itself 

 opens up. Sometimes there 

 is a small room, a sort of 

 alcove affair in the rear of 

 the front or main room. 

 The floors are smooth and 

 often leveled up with a mud plaster almost like cement 

 in its hardness, and some of the walls are plastered with 

 the same material. In many there are small holes or 

 openings leading to the outside, undoubtedly smoke holes 

 and for ventilatoin. Some of the rooms are badly smoked 

 while others show no signs of fires ever having been 

 built inside them. On the sides of many, small holes 

 have been bored into which no doubt poles were placed 

 upon which their clothing and other household furnish- 

 ings were hung as one sees them today in every pueblo 



