31 



In the face of the bluff immediately under this ruin, and upon a* re- 

 cessed bench situated about half-way between top and bottom, is a row 

 of little " rock shelters." A stratum of a rotten shaly sandstone has 

 been weathered or dug out, probably both, for a distance of 300 feet 

 along the bluff, to a depth of about six feet, leaving a firm floor and a 

 projecting ledge overhead, with just room enough to walk along without 

 stooping. A continuous row of buildings occupied this bench^ although 

 most of them have tumbled into the river, and none have their front 

 walls remaining. Door-ways through each of the dividing walls 

 afforded access along the whole line. A few rods up stream, and in the 

 same line of the bluff as the preceding, was another little niched cave- 

 house, (figure 3, Plate 18,) 14 feet in length, 5 feet high at the center and 

 6 deep, divided into two equal apartments ; a small square window, jnsfc 

 large enough for one to crawl through, was placed midway in the wall of 

 each half. We well might ask whether these little " cubby-holes " had 

 ever been used as residences, or whether, as seems at first most likely,- 

 they might not simply be " caches," or merely temporary places of refuge, 

 and while, no doubt, many of them are such, yet in the greater majority 

 the evidences of use and the presence of long-continued fires, indicated 

 by their smoke-blackened interiors, would prove them to have been 

 quite constantly occupied. Among all dwellers in mud-plastered houses 

 it is the practice to freshen up their habitations by repeated applica- 

 tions of clay, moistened to the proper consistency, and spread with the 

 hands, the thickness of the coating depending upon its consistency. 

 Every such application makes a building appear perfectly new, and 

 many of the best-sheltered cave-houses have just this appearance, as 

 though they were but just vacated. 



A quarter of a mile back over the flat level bench, is a long narrow hill 

 about 100 feet in height, commanding an extended view up and down 

 the valley, upon the summit of which is one of the circular, mound-like 

 inclosures which occur so frequently upon both the highlands and the 

 lowlands. It evidently has some connection with the group below on 

 the river's edge, for there are no other ruins within several miles. 



Continuing down the river, under the great bluff's which border it 

 closely, we find many ruins of the "rock-shelter" kind occurring fre- 

 quently in all sorts of positions, from the level of the valley to a height 

 of over 100 feet, and from the smallest kind of a " cache," not larger 

 than a bushel-basket, to buildings that sheltered several families. We 

 illustrate one group in figure 4,of PlatelS, that consists of a row of three 

 small houses built upon a ledge running horizontally along the perpen- 

 dicular face of the bluff, about GO feet above the trail immediately beloAv 

 it. The ledge was so narrow that the buildings occupied every available 

 inch of its surface. As near as we could judge from below, each was 

 about 5 feet wide and 10 long, with apertures through their end walls, 

 and in the two first ones windows in the outer wall. No possible means 

 of access were discernible, and if ladders were ever used they were 

 taller than any of the trees available for the purpose that grow in this 

 vicinity. 



About twelve miles below the Montezuma we discovered, far away 

 upon the opposite side of the river, a great circular cave, occupying 

 very nearly the entire height of the bluff" in which it occurred, and in 

 which, by close inspection with the glass, we were enabled to make out 

 a long line of masonry. Fording the river and approaching it we found 

 that the bluff-line at this place was a little over 200 feet in height, the 

 upper half a light-colored, firm, massive sandstone, and the lower a dark 

 red and shaly variety. The opening of the cave is almost perfectly cir* 



