1807 



GLEANINGS IN BEEoCULTURE. 



99 



was just getting a glimpse of the "crown of 

 life " that comes in in the latter part of our 

 text. 



" Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 

 thee a crown of life." 



Mr. L. B. Bell, of Camp Verde, Ariz., has 

 charge of two apiaries belonging to Mr. F. E. 

 Jordan. Mr. Jordan is now living in Jerome. 

 More of him anon. Mr. Bell does not get so 

 large a yield of honey by considerable as they 

 do in alfalfa districts. His yield during the 

 season just past was only about 70 lbs. per col- 

 ony. Their honey is gathered from mesquite 

 and other plants of the desert. The quality of 

 the honey, however, is exceedingly fine; and in 

 Jerome, 30 miles away, he gets for his whole 

 crop 7 cts. a pound. This is nearly double, you 

 will notice, what they get in the Salt River 

 Valley; but it has to be transported all this dis- 

 tance by wagon. 



Mrs. Bell was, before her marriage, a school- 

 teacher in the far West. And, by the way, tiiis 

 rough far West is more indebted to the school- 

 ma'ams who have gone away out there to teach 

 than perhaps it will ever realize. And may I 

 suggest right here that I fear that some of the 

 men who have succeeded in getting these 

 schoolma'ams for wives do not always realize 

 how much thev have to thank God for? Some 

 of them do, however, evidently, and Mr. Bell is 

 one of these. If I am correct, one reason why he 

 chose that desert land for a home was because 

 of what I have already mentioned— that is, the 

 mother died of consumption, when he was 

 almost too small to remember her very well. 

 He is now rugged and strong, and I should be 

 almost willing to spend the rest of my life in 

 Arizona if I thought I should be able to acquire 

 the endurance to wind or weather, that he 

 seems to possess. 



We arrived at his home Jan. 1. In the after- 

 noon we started out to explore some of the 

 ancient cliff-dwellings only a few miles from 

 his home. These dwellings are scattered more 

 or less all through Arizona. The first essential 

 is a cliff. Now, whether the natives in olden 

 times dug back into the chalky rock so as to 

 form cavern-!, or whether these caverns were 

 made by some flood in former ages, I am unable 

 to say. My impression is. however, that the 

 caves were, at least mostly, washed out by 

 water. The dwellings are usually found where 

 there is a soft stratum of chalkv rock between 

 two harder strata or layers. These are never 

 found very near the ground— generally from 30 

 to40fept, and often 100. and in extreme cases 

 400 or .500 feet from the level. Usually the cliffs 

 are inaccessible unless one uses a ladder, or 

 walks along on the edges of the shelving rocks. 

 Almost every time when I looked at these 

 homes made by that stranee race of people a 

 thousand ypars aeo, I would say, " Well, I am 

 pretty sure I should not be able to get up there 

 without ladders or some sort of assistance 

 along that line." But Mr. Bell, our pilot, re- 

 plied that we could reach every one of them if 

 we hunted up the path used by the cliff-dweliers 

 of old. 



A good many times we found holes in the 

 rocks, probably made for the hands, so as to 

 enable one to climb along the dizzy heights. 

 The rooms are usually a sort of cave back in the 



rock. The opening to these caves is closed up 

 with pieces of rock and mortar, very much as a 

 stone mason lays a wall nowadays. They did 

 very little stone-cutting, however. The chalky 

 rock pounded up seemed to furnish the mortar. 

 Instead of cutting the rocks with stone cutters' 

 tools they evidently selected such as were fit for 

 their purpose, and showed much skill in laying 

 them so as to have a smooth wall, outside and 

 in. This wall not only closed up the entrance 

 of the cave, but it divides off the rooms inside, 

 or divides one man's house from that of his 

 neighbor. The doors of these dwellings are all 

 low; in fact, it is tiresome, on account of the 

 constant stooping, to explore them. Some of 

 the largest are high enough inside so one can 

 stand erect; but in many of them you will be 

 obliged to sit or stoop down. They are black- 

 ened more or less overhead by smoke, and I 

 might almost call it the smoke of ages, for the 

 room still smells of smoke, even though hun- 

 dreds of years have past since any fire was 

 built. In some of the largest and finest, places 

 for beds or couches were worked out of the 

 solid rock. Much of this work is obscure, how- 

 ever, on account of the great quantities of bat 

 manure that cover the floors. In some of the 

 buildings it is at least a foot deep. Everybody 

 seems to acknowledge the value of this bat 

 guano, or manure; but the expense of hauling 

 it to a railroad station, and then paying the 

 cost of transportation, stands in the way of its 

 utilization. In one of the extensive cliff dwell- 

 ings, in their search for relics, it seems to me a 

 full carload of the guano was shoveled out in a 

 heap. Under the influence of the rain it seems 

 to have softened up into a material that looks 

 very much like old well-rotted manure. Our 

 readers may remember that we have already 

 used bat manure, shipped in from some of the 

 Southern States, in our greenhouse experiments. 



There have been many conjectures made, to 

 the effect that these cave-dwellers were small 

 in stature. None of the mummies are larger 

 than would be those of children ten or twelve 

 years old. The ceiling to the dwellings would 

 accommodate people of about that height, and 

 their doorways likewise. But it should be re- 

 membered that many races, even at the present 

 time, have low doors and low ceilings. They 

 stoop when they go inside, and usually sit on 

 the ground instead of on chairs, as civilized peo- 

 ple do. But, to go back to the cliff-dwellings. 



Oneof the most interesting features connected 

 with every one of these old-time homes is one or 

 more little closets opening into the main apart- 

 ment. These closets are egg-shaped, and are 

 made far enough into the rock so the opening 

 can be closed with stones and mortar; then 

 after it is plastered over with thin mortar, 

 something like whitewash, one would never 

 dream of the existence of this cupboard or closet 

 were it not that the wall sounds hollow when 

 you pound on it where these are found. It has 

 been suggested that these were made forstoring 

 their grain. When walled up it was secure 

 from rats, mice, and insects; and in the dry 

 rock it would probably keep several years. On 

 the top of the cliff we found the remains of 

 dwellings made entirelv of stone walls. Where 

 these were exposed to the weather, the roof had 

 long ago fallen in and rotted away: but in one 

 place we found a piece of timber over a door- 

 way, and it was still sound. Mr. Beil recog- 

 nized it as a very durable wood found on the 

 desert. As quite a number of mummies of these 

 ancient people have recently been found, we 

 saw evidences almost everywhere of where the 

 pick had been used in searching for relics. 



In almost every one of these dwellings we 

 find little shriveled-up corncobs. It seemed to 



