TO THE COCO-MARICOPA VILLAGES. 195 
tinued hot, we endeavored, by making very early 
starts, to terminate our day’s journeys by noon. 
A number of fish were brought in to-day by the 
Mexicans resembling the buffalo-fish of the Mississippi. 
They drove them into a small nook in a laguna near 
by, and then rushed into the water and killed them 
with poles. I ate of them at dinner, but found them 
soft and unpalatable. 
Towards evening, when the sun began to lose its 
force, I took my sketch-book and went to the base of 
the bluff, where I had noticed as we passed a number 
of inscribed rocks. I found hundreds of these bould- 
ers covered with rude figures of men, animals, and other 
objects of grotesque forms, all pecked in with a sharp 
instrument. Many of them, however, were so much 
defaced by long exposure to the weather, and by 
subsequent markings, that it was impossible to make 
them out. Among these rocks I found several which 
contained sculptures on the lower side, in such a posi- 
tion that it would be impossible to cut them where 
they then lay. Some of them weighed many tons, 
and would have required immense labor to place them 
there, and that too without an apparent object. The 
natural inference was, that they had fallen down from 
the summit of the mountain after the sculptures were 
made on them. A few only seemed recent; the 
others bore the marks of great antiquity. 
Like most of the rude Indian sculptures or mark- 
ings which I have seen, I do not think these possess 
any historic value, as many suppose. Where an inge- 
nious Indian, for the want of other employment, cuts 
a rude figure of a man or an animal on a rock in some 
