12 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



plains. The word mesa is Spanish for table, and indeed many of these 

 mesas when seen at a distance may suggest to the imaginative mind 

 tables with cloths reaching to the floor. 



Once the level of these mesa tops was the level of all of this vast 

 southwestern country, but the rains and floods of centuries have 

 washed away all the softer earth down to its present level leaving 

 standing only the rocky spots or those so covered with surface rocks 

 that the rains could not reach the softer gravel underneath. 



All have heard of the Enchanted Mesa in New Mexico which the 

 Indians of recent times considered sacred. The Mesa Verde, or green 

 mesa (because it is covered with stunted cedar and pinyon trees in a 

 land where trees are few) is the next most widely known. 



The Mesa Verde is one of the largest mesas. It is fifteen miles 

 long; and eight miles wide. At its foot are masses of broken rocks 

 rising from 300 to 500 feet above the bare plains. These are called 

 the talus. Above the talus yellow sandstone walls rise precipitously 

 two or three hundred feet higher to the mesa's top. 



It stands on the right bank of the Mancos River, down to which 

 a number of small, rough canyons, once beds of streams, slope from 

 the top of the mesa. It is in the sides of these small canyons where 

 the most wonderful and best preserved cliff dwellings in America, if 

 not in the world, are found to-day. 



LIVING HARD IN PREHISTORIC TIMES 



In prehistoric times a large human population lived in these cliff 

 dwellings, seeking a home there for protection. They obtained their 

 livelihood by agriculture on the forbidding tops of the mesa, culti- 

 vating scanty farms, which yielded them a small crop of corn. 



Life must have been hard in this dry country, when the Mesa 

 Verde communities flourished in the sides of these sandstone cliffs. 

 Game was scarce and hunting arduous. The Mancos yielded a few 

 fishes. The earth contributed berries or nuts. At that time, as at 

 present, water was rare, and found only in sequestered places near 

 the heads of the canyons, but notwithstanding these difficulties the 

 inhabitants cultivated their farms and raised their corn, which they 

 ground on flat stones called metates, and baked their bread on a flat 

 stone griddle. They boiled their meat in well-made vessels, some of 

 which were artistically decorated. 



Their life was hard, but so confidently did they believe that they 

 were dependent upon the gods to make the rain fall and the corn 

 grow that they were a religious people who worshipped the sun as 

 the father of all, and the earth as the mother who brought them all 

 their material blessings. They possessed no written language, and 

 could only record their thoughts by a few symbols which they painted 



