474 GKOLOGICAL EXCURSION TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 



PUEBLOS. 



To the ethnologist this whole region is of special interest by reason 

 of the opportunities afforded to study the institutions, arts, and archi- 

 tecture of Pueblo Indians. From the train may be seen the villages of 

 Isleta and Laguna, besides a number of outlying farms and hamlets 

 belonging to Laguna, and the whole region abounds with ruins and other 

 vestiges of more extended occupation. Through an immense area, com- 

 prising the half of Colorado and Utah and the greater part of Arizona 

 and New Mexico, there is scarcely an acre on which shards of Pueblo 

 pottery may not be found. Though the houses an 1 of stone, the mortar 

 employed has no lithifying principle and yields to the storms, so that 

 the walls of abandoned houses are apt, to fall, but a multitude of 

 structures built in shallow caves on the faces of cliffs have been pre- 

 served, enabling the student to assure himself of the identity of the 

 culture represented by the ruins with that of the modern villages. A 

 group of cliff dwellings is readily accessible from Flagstaff. 



