MESA VERDE 431 



his constant and conscientious work; but since that elate his 

 efforts have been in the department of ethnology. His interest 

 in these studies was aroused as early as 1857, when during a 

 visit to Montreal he dsicovered a shell-heap and on investiga- 

 tion determined it to be the site of an ancient habitation. He 

 was one of the first in this country to attribute these relics to 

 man, and since that time he has personally explored shell-heaps, 

 burial mounds, village sites, and caves in various parts of North 

 America, and has directed extensive explorations in the United 

 States and Mexico and in Central and South America. He has 

 been the director of large bodies of assistants in ethnological 

 and somatological investigations, : the results of which are evi- 

 denced in the collections in the Peabody Museum, the American 

 Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Field Colum- 

 bian Museum in Chicago. In connection with these researches 

 he has published more than three hundred papers. He was the 

 originator of the Naturalist's Directory ; he was one of the found- 

 ers of the American Naturalist and an editor of it till 1874. He 

 has edited the reports and proceedings of at least a dozen socie- 

 ties and institutions, and has contributed not a little to the more 

 popular magazine literature of the day. J. H. 



MESA VERDE 



By F. H. Newell, 

 Chief Hydrographer, U. S. Geological Survey 



The Mesa Verde, situated in the extreme southwestern corner 

 of Colorado, has been made known through the beautifully illus- 

 trated book of Nordenskiold, entitled " The Cliff Dwellers of the 

 Mesa Verde." Besides ethnologic interest, it has many attrac- 

 tions for the geographer or geologist. It is a remnant of an an- 

 cient plain which formerly stretched southerly and westerly from 

 the country where now are situated the high La Plata mountains. 

 During the course of geologic time the same force presumably 

 which uplifted the La Platas tilted this plain and, erosion being 

 facilitated, it was deeply trenched, until now the Mesa Verde 

 stands as a great table-land slightly tilted toward the south, 

 presenting to view from all sides sharp precipitous edges. On 

 the north is the bold promontory known as Point Lookout, facing 



