NORTHWESTERN NEW MEXICO. 359 



Perhaps the most remarkable fact in connection with these ruins is the 

 remoteness of a large proportion of them from water. They occur every- 

 where in the bad lands to a distance of twenty-five miles from any terres- 

 trial source of supply. The climatic character of the country there has 

 either undergone material change, or the mode of securing and preserving 

 a supply of water employed by these people differed from any known to 

 us at the present time. I found no traces of cisterns, and the only water- 

 holders observed were the earthenware pots buried in the ground, which 

 did not exceed eighteen inches in diameter. There is, however, no doubt 

 that these people manufactured great numbers of these narrow-necked 

 globular vessels, whose principal use must have been the holding of fluids, 

 and chiefly of water. Nevertheless, it is scarcely conceivable that the in- 

 habitants of the houses now so remote from water could have subsisted 

 under the present conditions. Professor Newberry (Ives' Report) is of the 

 opinion that a diminution in the amount of rain-fall over this region has 

 taken place at no very remote period in the past, and cites the death of 

 forests of pine trees which still stand as probably due to increasing drought. 

 It is, of course, evident that erosive agencies were once much more active 

 in this region than at present, as the numerous and vast canons testify, but 

 that any change sufficient to affect this process should have occurred in the 

 human period, seems highly improbable. In other words, the process of 

 cutting canons of such depth in rocks of such hardness is so slow that its 

 early stages, which were associated with a different distribution of surface- 

 water supply, must have far antedated the human period. 



Nevertheless, if we yield to the supposition that during the period of 

 residence of the ancient inhabitants the water-supply from rains was greater 

 than now, what evidence do we possess which bears on the age of that 

 period ? There is no difference between the vegetation found growing in 

 these buildings and that of the surrounding hills and valleys ; the pines, 

 oaks, and sage-brush are of the same size, and, to all appearances, of the 

 same age. I should suppose them to be contemporary in every respect. 

 In the next place, the bad-lands have undergone a definite amount of 

 atmospheric erosion since the occupancy of the houses which stand on their 

 summits. The rate of this erosion, under present atmospheric influences, 



