NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CURIOSITIES OF THE GILA COUNTRY. 137 



ever, show immense quantuies of almost pure marketable alum. This alum find 

 Mr. Shaw tells us, is on the Gila River about two miles below the fork of the 

 Little Gila and four miles below the Gila hot springs. 



Mr. Shaw reports numerous hot springs in that section, most of them gush- 

 ing out of the rocks that form the river banks, some of them hot enough to cook 

 in, and most of them too hot to hold the hand in. The main hot springs refer- 

 red to above are reported to have effected wonderful rheumatic and other cures. 

 The country is abundantly watered and wooded and is covered with the finest 

 of grass. The Gila is full of trout and other fish. Game, while still moderately 

 plentiful, has been mostly scared away from the region of the hot springs by pro- 

 fessional and other hunters, as well as ranchmen, who are beginning to locate in 

 this difficult-to-get-at section of the Gila. At present the only way to get into 

 this section is with pack animals over a precipitous trail of several miles, wagons 

 having to be abandoned in the gorge of the Litttle Gila on the North Star road, 

 about two miles from the hot springs and about seven miles from the alum find, 

 going from Socorro or from the Black Range. By the way of Silver City and 

 Georgetown wagons are abandoned on '"Sapio" creek with about eighteen miles 

 northward of pack-animal trail to the hot springs. 



Mr. Shaw being an amateur photographer, also, invariably carries his "out- 

 fit " along on his surveying trips, combining pleasure with business, and bring- 

 ing back with him photographs of all objects and scenes of interest that he meets 

 with on the way. He brings back from this trip over sixty photographs of the 

 Gila country, among which are a number of exterior and interior photographs of 

 some interesting cliff-dwellers' ruins he encountered in a cave about four miles 

 west from the hot springs. 



The cave, he says, is in a cliff which forms one side of a deep narrow gorge 

 or canon ; it has but one entrance, which was strongly fortified; but above and 

 beyond the entrance the cave has two porchdike openings into the face of the 

 cliff, under and through which can be seen, from the opposite side of the canon, 

 the buildings extending back into the cave. Mr. Shaw says: " After a some- 

 what difficult climb of about loo feet from the bottom of the gorge I reached 

 the entrance, which is around a corner or angle of the cliff, and passing through 

 an opening in the fortification wall and through several rooms behind it, after 

 ascending a little slope, I found myself on the floor of the cave, which was on a 

 level with the top of the entrance. The floor is covered with a fine, impalpable 

 dust to a considerable depth. This cavern was of circular form, about fifty feet 

 across and, perhaps, fifteen or twenty feet high. Looking northeast and parallel 

 to the face of the cliff one sees the whole length of the cave, which by reason of 

 its other front openings gives it the appearance of a porch-like gallery. 



The cavern above the entrance is quite dark and seems to have been used 

 for corral purposes, as it has no building except at the entrance. Going toward 

 the first porch the cavern narrows down to a small passage, where the buildings 

 begin and are continuous from here through a similar passage into the second 

 porch. There are about twenty-five houses or rooms in the cave, varying in size 



