SI 6 Wisconsin Acaddmy of Sciences] Arts, and Letters. 



did from the many storied Puebloes, to cultivate the soil below, 

 and then transported the products to their store houses, hi^h up 

 among the rocks. The ascent to these cliff houses was sometimes 

 quite difficult, the height at which they were erected being in 

 places several hundred feet. A cliff house visited by W. S, 

 Jackson has a height of 600 feet above the bottom of the canon, 

 100 feet of it almost perpendicular wall. The ledge was ten feet 

 wide by twenty feet in length. The same party discovered a cave 

 village, perched up upon a recessed bench, 70 feet above the 

 valley ; the total length of the town being 545 feet, with a width 

 in no place more than 40 feet, an cstufa or council hall being 

 built also into the cliff in the midst of the town ; and two rows of 

 rooms also erected in the shelter, the oater row for residences and 

 the inner row for store houses. 



On the San Juan river, thirty-five miles ^below the mouth of 

 the La Plata, and ten miles above the Mancos, Mr. Holmes ob- 

 served an interesting combination of cave-shelters and towers 

 united in a system for giving signals upon the approach of the 

 enemy. In the face of a vertical bluff 35 feet high, and about 

 half way from the trail below, caves had been quarried or weath- 

 ered in considerable numbers in the shales which constitute one 

 of the strata in the bluff. A hard platform of rock formed the 

 floor, and afforded sufficient protection for a narrow platform in 

 front of these openings. Immediately above these caves upon 

 this summit of the bluffs, a system of ruined circular towers,, 

 enclosed with semi-circular walls, with the open side of the semi- 

 circle facing the precipice, was observed. The caves were acces- 

 sible from the valley below only by means of ladders, and the 

 towers, in turn, only by ladders from the caves, through the open, 

 side of their semi-circular enclosures. The walls of these enclos- 

 ures presented no openings to the plateau above, and it is inferred 

 that the towers which they enclosed served as outlooks, from 

 which the sentinel could signal the people who were engaged in 

 tilling the valley below to flee to their cave-shelters at the ap- 

 proach of the enemy, and when too closely pressed by an enemy 

 upon the plateau, the sentinel himself could make his retreat by 

 means of his ladder to the caves beneath. 



