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 

 64 8 and to have flourished in this region for several 

 centuries. 



From these descended the Aztecs, who, in the 

 eleventh centur}% 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 Abbd 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 histor\^ 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 



