TO JUNCTION OF GRAND AND GREEN RIVERS. 89 



stone, hammer-dressed on the exposed faces. Fragments of pottery are exceedingly 

 common, though, like the buildings, showing great age. There is every evidence that 

 a large population resided here for many years, perhaps centuries, and that they 

 deserted it several hundred years ago; that they were Pueblo Indians, and hence 

 peaceful, industrious, and agricultural. How they managed to exist here, and how 

 their town was depopulated, are questions that suggest themselves at once, but cer- 

 tainly the former is the more puzzling. They may have been exterminated by the 

 Xavajos and Utahs, warlike and aggressive tribes who occupy the adjacent region; but 

 where a population of many thousands once existed, now as many hundreds could not 

 be sustained, either by agriculture or the chase. The surrounding country contains 

 very little animal life, and almost none of it is now cultivable. It is 7,000 feet in 

 altitude, intensely cold in winter, and very dry throughout the year. The want ot 

 water alone would forbid the residence of any considerable number of persons at 

 Surouaro if everything else were furnished them. The arroyos, through which 

 streams seem to have once flowed, are now dry, and it was only with great difficulty 

 that sufficient water was obtained for the supply of our train. The remains of 

 metates (corn-mills) are abundant about the ruins, and corn was doubtless the staple 

 article of their existence, but none could now be raised here. The ruins of several 

 large reservoirs, built of masonry, may be seen at Surouaro, and there are traces of 

 acequias, which led to these, through which water was brought perhaps from a great 

 distance. At first sight the difficulties in the way of obtaining a supply of water 

 for any considerable population at this point would seem insurmountable, and the 

 readiest solution of the problem would be to infer a change of climate, by which this 

 region was made uninhabitable! Such a conclusion is not necessary, however, for the 

 skill and industry of the ancient inhabitants of the arid table-lands of New Mexico 

 and Arizona achieved wonders in the way of procuring a supply of water. Some- 

 times this was done by carefully collecting, in cisterns of masonry, every drop of a 

 trickling spring ; sometimes by canals, through which water was brought from long 

 distances. The Moqui villages are now supplied, though rather scantily, by such 

 means, where, if the cisterns were to fall into ruins, a single traveler could hardly find 

 water enough for himself and horse. 



From Surouaro to the base of the Sierra Abajo our experience was exceedingly mo- 

 notonous. The physical aspects of the country are everywhere the same, and its geologi- 

 cal structure equally unvaried. The Lower Cretaceous sandstones here lie nearly 

 level, but are exposed in all the ravines, generally dry, which we crossed, while 

 low mounds of the overlying shales were almost constantly in sight; their characteris- 

 tic fossils lying about in such profusion that thousands of tons of them might have 

 been collected. 



After leaving the immediate vicinity of the mountains, no beds of drift or trans- 

 ported materials of any kind were met with, and it is evident that the denudation 

 which the strata once covering the Sage-plain have suffered has not been effected by 

 any deep and wide-spread currents by which this country has been swept, but by the 

 quiet and long-continued action of atmospheric influences — rains, frosts, &c. No 

 flowing stream was met with in all this part of our route, and we were compelled to 



12 S F 



