70 EXPLORING EXPEDITION FEOM SANTA Ffi 



cessive generations wore so deeply the threshold of its entrance, no tradition now re- 

 mains. The mesa on which it stands is some 500 feet in height, is composed of a cel- 

 lular trachyte, and the top is only to be reached by a narrow and difficult path. The 

 houses are now in ruins, but were once numerous, and all built of dressed stone. 

 Within the town we noticed a dozen or more cstuffas excavated from the solid rock. 

 They are circular in form, 18-20 feet in diameter by 10 or 12 in depth. They all ex- 

 hibited evidence of once having been covered with wooden superstructures. In most of 

 them, four excavations on opposite sides would seem to have been used as the sockets 

 for the insertion of wooden posts, and in one is a niche cut in the side, witli a chimney 

 leading from it; probably the place where the sacred fire was kept perpetually burning. 

 The style of architecture in which this town was built, as well as the estuffas, show that 

 its inhabitants belonged to the race of Pueblo Indians; a race now nearly extinct, but 

 once occupying every habitable portion of New Mexico. 



"Spending the night at Los Caiiones, we started this morning very early for the 

 ascent of the peak. This we mostly accomplished on mule-back; passing over a suc- 

 cession of- hills composed of the variegated marls containing beds of gypsum of great 

 thickness covered with a forest of pinon and cedar. When we had arrived within 500 

 feet of the summit, we left our mules and commenced the ascent on foot, This part of 

 the mountain is very steep, and the upper 200 feet is a perpendicular wall of trap-rock. 

 The summit we found to form a cucliillo, a narrow, knife-like ridge, bounded on every 

 side by vertical precipices. Its height above the sea is about !), 000 feet. The extreme 

 summit is covered with pinon, and the slope with yello\v pi ire, Douglass spruce, the 

 western balsam-fir, and the quaking-asp. The view from the summit was particularly 

 fine, sweeping a circle of fifty miles radius, except toward the Valles, which are very 

 near, and fill the southeastern horizon. On the east we looked down the valley of the 

 Chama, across that of the liio Grande, and our view in this direction was bounded by 

 the high and unbroken ranges of the Santa Fe Mountains. Northeast the Taos Mount- 

 ains and the Spanish Peaks were plainly visible. On the north the foreground w;is 

 filled with the low and near mountains of Conejos, beyond which, north of west, we 

 could just discern the picturesque summits of the Sierra San Juan, and Sierra de la 

 Plata. In the northwest we overlooked the course of the Chama for m;iny miles, and 

 the comparatively level and open country through which it flows. Almost beneath us 

 was the junction of the Puerco and Chama, in a broad valley of excavation, as red as 

 blood, from the exposed surfaces of the eroded marls; farther west, higher table-lands, 

 composed of the yellow and blue rocks of the Lower and Middle Cretaceous. 



"Descending from the mountain, we regained the trail of our party at Arroyo Seco. 

 There we were surrounded by a series of buttes of most varied and fantastic, forms, 

 worked out by erosion from the marl series of the Trias. Their colors are exceed- 

 ingly brilliant, -crimson and orange being the most conspicuous. The vivid green and 

 level valley is framed by these colored cliffs, forming a most beautiful and impressive 

 picture." 



At Arroyo Seco the trail we were following leaves the river and enters a canon, 

 which cuts the plateau bordering the valley from base to summit. Most of the section 

 exposed in its walls is composed of the Triassic marls, which includes beds of gypsum 



