DEAD CITIES OF NEW MEXICO. 481 



five to ten feet. They are of dressed stone laid in mud, with angles, niches and 

 secret recesses now disclosed to view by the masks having fallen. From the ap- 

 pearance of the apertures once windows, I should judge them to have been in 

 pointed arches, for the tops are broken, fallen and irregular though the sides, 

 and the sills of stone have suffered little. 



By digging anywhere in the vicinity of the church one can enter the dwell- 

 ings of the ancient inhabitants, as they were under ground, and resemble cellars 

 more than anything else. In them are found many relics in the shape of stone 

 and copper utensils, earthenware jars and vessels, and the usual debris. The 

 most mysterious of all connected with this old city is regarding the water supply. 

 The remains of cultivation are seen, huge acequias can be traced about the city ; 

 the old fields are easily told. But to-day there is not one drop of water visible, 

 nor can any source be traced from which it could have come. Sands, such as exist 

 in river beds and lakes, shine hot and dry about the town, and what might have 

 once been a river bed divides the dead city, proper, from the church. There is 

 one theory which might solve it, and that is, about this point ends what the geo- 

 graphers mark as the "Ancient Lake Basin," in the center of which are now 

 three extinct volcanic craters and for miles about them the mighty flow of lava. 

 Possibly this ancient city drew its water supply from this ancient lake and it 

 might have been that a volcanic eruption ended at once lake and city ; as the 

 houses all bear evidence of a hasty abandonment; such things being still found 

 in them which people at leisure would naturally have removed. There are other 

 things attractive, and teaching their lesson; for the remains of furnaces and such 

 rude means and vessels as the primitive races used in mining may yet be found 

 scattered about in many places, showing conclusively the existence of mines 

 which paid, even with their rude methods. All implements found are of either 

 stone or copper; the furnaces of mud and rock. 



The other towns I have mentioned, especially Abo and Cuerro, have the same 

 features as Gran Quivira, except the peculiarity of the lost water supply. The 

 mortises in the church walls show that heavy timbers were used for roofing and 

 they must evidently have been brought from a distance and men have carried 

 them, for at that remote time horses and oxen were unknown, nor have we any 

 remains of wagons, or wagon roads; they were probably carried on the shoulders 

 of men in the way Indians still do, making numerical strength answer The 

 churches of Abo, Belen and Cuerro, however, differ in this, from that of Gran 

 Quivira, these ones being built of small pieces of rough stone, laid in mud, while 

 the latter is of large squares of wrought stone. All four walls of the Cuerrd 

 church still stand, and it is the third in size ; the Belen church being smallest of 

 all, and in most ruinous condition, only a few piles remaining erect. Only one 

 ■end of the building at Abo has fallen and that caused by excavations in search of 

 treasure, for later day traditions tell, that some of the wealthy New Mexicans 

 thus got their nucleus. Other and later searchers have found only corpses. 



The remains of this Abo ruin are most picturesque as it stands on a knoll in 

 the center of a rough valley with mountain and forest beyond and on every side 



