A NOTICE OF THE ANCIENT RUINS IN ARIZONA AND UTAH 

 LYING ABOUT THE RIO SAN JUAN. 



By W. H. Jackson. 



In continuing the investigation, commenced last season, of the very 

 interesting ruins scattered throughout the San Juan basin, I proceeded 

 to Parrott City, a frontier mining-camp on La Plata Eiver, where I pro- 

 cured the services of Harry Lee as guide and interpreter. Mr. E, A. 

 Barber, naturalist and special correspondent of the New York Herald, 

 was also of the party. Providing ourselves with the supplies which 

 had been forwarded to this point via Tierra Amarilla, we started out 

 late in July, journeying westwardly to that point on the Hovenweep 

 from which we had turned back last year, and where we shall also re- 

 sume our explorations. 



The Hovenweep (a deserted valley) is a tributary of the McElmo, 

 ■which, together with the wide-spreading arms of the Montezuma, drain 

 into the San Juan all that portion of the country lying between the 

 Mesa Verde and the Sierra Abajo, covering in the aggregate some two 

 thousand five hundred square miles. Their labyrinthine canons head 

 close upon the Dolores on the north, and ramify the plateaus in every 

 direction with an interminable series of deep, desolate gorges, and wide, 

 barren valleys. There is not a living stream throughout this whole 

 region. During the summer months water occurs in but very few places, 

 generally in pockets, sometimes in springs, where the excess, if any, is 

 soon swallowed by the hot and thirsty sands. The rainy season is in 

 winter and the early spring months, when the water is more generously 

 distributed, being then found in the many basins scattered over the bare 

 tops of the m6sas, as well as in the beds of the caiions, the lower tem- 

 perature of the colder season preventing the rapid evaporation of sum- 

 mer and autumn weather. As a great proportion of the surface of this 

 region is a bare bed of rock, with a soil in the lowlands nearlj' imper- 

 vious to moisture, the winter showers soon gather their waters together 

 in great floods in the main channels, and then, rushing down in a solid 

 body, form those deep " washes " so characteristic of the country. But 

 these torrents are short-lived, and it is only by noting the height of 

 the drift-material lodged upon the trunks of the venerable cottonwoods 

 bordering the banks that we can fully realize such great bodies of water 

 ever having existed in so dusty a bed. Every cailou and valley has its 

 corresponding wash, worn perpendicularly down through the dry, easily- 

 eroded soil, forming circuitous but excellent pathways. In some valleys,, 

 where the drainage is considerable, these washes frequently attain a 

 depth of from 30 to 40 feet, and are impassable for miles. 



The intervening table-lands obtain a very nearly uniform height of 

 500 feet, running up to over 1,000 feet as we approach the Dolorei 

 divide. In the wider valleys the maximum is reached by successive 

 steps, or benches, rising one back of the other, while in the narrow 



