168 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



limit no human being - may reach, beds and rivers 

 of lava cooled for unnumbered years, freaks of 

 Nature varied and various, ancient gold mines so 

 craftily concealed that many remain hidden to this 

 day — cave dwellings and cliff dwellings, traces of 

 cities and pueblos — signs of age-old tribes who set 

 their mark upon the land forever. Canons green 

 with live-oak and fern and sparkling with eternal 

 springs, even our own familiar bosques bowing and 

 sighing the white nights through by our errant riv- 

 er's bed — all reveal little, conceal so much. In this 

 lies part of the wonderful country's spell — its preg- 

 nant silence. 



"And here" wrote Mr. Bancroft, "we come still 

 upon a people. . . . retaining many of their original 

 characteristics, and living on the same sites in 

 buildings similar to, or in some cases perhaps 

 identical with, those occupied by their ancestors at 

 the coming of the Europeans." 



Whether or no the claim put forward by the 

 Pueblos i. e. that they are the veritable aborigines 

 of the American continent be true, it is certain that 

 at the coming of the Spaniards various offshoots 

 of this great tribal people were well in advance of 

 European civilization, in some respects at least. 

 In the year of grace, 1914, an English writer came 

 with an old idea presented on a new dish. Con- 

 siderably over a quarter of a century ago New 

 Mexican archaeologists, patiently investigating the 

 Northern Mystery, gave it as their opinion that the 

 prehistoric tribes of the Western States, the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley and Mexico, were of Mongolian 



