41 



miles a cave-shelter appeared, and then as the valley widened it was 

 dotted in many places with mounds thickly strewn over with the ever- 

 accompanying'ceramic handiwork of the ancient people in whose foot- 

 steps we are following, and occurring so frequently and of such extent 

 as to excite astonishment at the numbers this narrow valley supported. 

 The line is so sharply drawn that in an hour's ride all traces of any ruins 

 are lost; and there is not so much as a piece of pottery to show that these 

 people had ever extended their residence beyond the limits of their 

 canon. 



Soon other cave-dwellings appear, most of them little walled-up cir- 

 cular orifices in the rock, generally inaccessible, but many were approached 

 by steps, or rather small holes cut in in such a manner as to enable the 

 climber to ascend the rock as by a ladder. Examples of these kinds of 

 ruins are shown in Figs. 1 and '4 of Plate 17, each about 40 feet above 

 the valley, the first perfectly inaccessible and without the least sign of 

 the original method, of reaching it; in the other one the walls once 

 closing it have been pushed down so that only traces of them remain ; 

 the steps leading up, however, show it to have been considerably used ; 

 they are now so worn down by the disintegrating influences of time as 

 to no longer answer their purpose. 



Throughout this caiion we find frequent examples of the footsteps 

 cut in the rock, in the generality of cases being simply a way of scaling 

 the smooth, nearly peri)endicular wall of sandstone, which hems in the 

 cafion on both sides for twelve or fifteen miles ; probably a ready mode 

 of escape up the bluff should enemies appear. 



The cliff and cave dwellings, very small habitations, seldom larger 

 than the one in Fig. 2, Plate 15, appear to occur in groups, not always 

 in connection with the old valley ruins, but rather to alternate in succes- 

 sion as we progress down the caiion. 



In one of the cave-dwellings. Fig. 3, Plate 17, perfectly black with long- 

 continued smokes inside, and bearing other marks of long use, we found 

 tlie complete skeleton of a human being; the remains, as afterward deter- 

 mined, of a young man somewhat under a medium size. The excre- 

 ment of small animals, dust, and other rubbish filled the floor of the 

 little house a foot deep, nearly burying the scattered bones; with them 

 are the shreds of a woolen blanket, woven in long stripes of black and 

 white, just such as the l:>Javajos and Moquis make at the present time. 

 It is likely that the remains are those of a Navajo, a people who occu- 

 pied all this country up to within a short time, within the remembrance 

 of the older persons, and who were driven beyond the San Juan by the 

 onslaughts of the aggressive Utes. 



After traveling about 20 miles from our starting-point at the foot of 

 the mountains, half of the way in the canon, we camped at the inter- 

 section of a large caiion coming in from the west, traversed by a large, 

 well traveled Indian trail, that continued on down, probably the same 

 one we had crossed earlier in the day. At this point the bottoms 

 widened out to 200 to 300 yards in width, and are literally covered 

 with ruins, evidently those of an extensive settlement or community, 

 although at the present time water was so scarce — not being able to 

 find a drop within a radius of six miles — that we were compelled to 

 make a dry camp. The ruins consist entirely of great solid mounds of 

 rocky debris, piled up in rectangular masses, covered with earth and a 

 brush-growth, bearing every indication of extreme age; just how old 

 is about as impossible to tell as to say how old the rocks of this canou 

 are. This group is a mile in length, in the middle of the valley-space, 

 and upon both sules of the wash. Each separate building would cover 



