JACKSON.] EUINS OF SOUTHWEST COLOEADO, &C. 425 



surrounding it. Eight miles up the caiion De Chelly are the ruins of a 

 cave-town very much like the one described (Plate L), but much smaller, 

 and with a mined mass of houses at the foot of the blufis below the cave- 

 like bench.* About the head of the valley the Navajo Indians, taking 

 advantage of the water which comes down thus far from the mountains 

 to the east, have under cultivation several hundred acres, planted with 

 corn, pumpkins, and melons. From here our trail to the Moqui settle- 

 ments branched off in a southwesterly direction to a low divide under 

 the southern end of the Mesa Vaca, where it turned nearly south and 

 hardly deviated from a bee-line for a distance of nearly 40 miles to Tegua, 

 the nearest of the Moqui towns. 



We will not now stop to discuss the question as to what connection 

 may have existed between the ancient builders of the San Juan and the 

 present semi civilized people known as the Moquis, but return to the 

 mouth of Epsom Creek and describe the many curious remains found 

 north of the San Juan, all of which bear some relationship to those of 

 the Hovenweep already noticed. 



RUINS OF EPS03I CREEK. 



Fifteen miles up Epsom Creek a side caiion comes in from the left, 

 down which trickles a scanty stream of brackish water with the pecu- 

 liarity of taste and action which has given the name to the whole val- 

 ley. Camping here, we extended our observations up this lateral caiion 

 some 8 or 10 miles in quest of ruins, and found them numerous enough 

 to satisfy our most earnest desire, although not of the importance of the 

 greater ones of the San Juan and De Chelly. All were of the small cave 

 kind, mostly mere '-cubby-holes," but so smoke-blackened inside and 

 showing other marks of use as to convince us they had long been occupied 

 but not during any very recent period. In the generality of cases they 

 were on small benches or in shallow caves situated near the bed of the 

 stream, but the farther up stream we went the higher they were built 

 in the bluffs. In one instance a bluff several hundred feet in height con- 

 tains half a dozen small houses sandwiched in its various strata, the 

 highest being 150 feet above the valley. Each consists of but one room, 

 and one of them is a perfect specimen of adobe-plastered masonry, hardly 

 a crack appearing upon its smoothly-stuccoed surface. A short distance 

 above the entrance to the canon a square tower has been built upon a 

 commanding point of the mesa (Plate LI), and in a position perfectly in- 

 accessible so far as any means at our command were concerned. The 

 stones of which it is composed are of a very nearly uniform size, more 

 so than in any of the buildings we have seen west of the Hovenweep. 



Upon the opposite side of the main Epsom Creek Valley, and on top 

 of the high bluffs of sandstone which border it for nearly its whole 

 length, we found some cave-houses in a most singularly out-of-the-way 

 place — in the very last place in the world where one would expect to 

 find them. Scaling the bluff" at the very imminent risk of our necks, we 

 came suddenly upon a broad open cave, near the top, containing the 

 usual style of stone-built and mud plastered houses, divided j,nto four 

 or five apartments, of just the size and number that would be required 

 by an ordinary family of eight or ten persons. On top of the bluff" we 

 found the remains of a very old circular tower 40 feet in diameter, the 

 stones all crumbled, rounded, and moss covered. Near by were remains 

 of two other cave habitations. 



* Report of Lieut. J. H. Simpson of an Expedition in the Navajo Country. Ex. Doc. 

 No. 64, 31st Congress, 1st session. 



