SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
317 
other animals with human heads. The outside of these ves¬ 
sels was glazed—the inside of a brick color, and unglazed 
There were four principal entrances to this city j one in the 
centre of each side. 
These ruins stand in the midst of one of the most sterile 
wastes on the Colorado. A small wet hollow near by fur¬ 
nishes, by digging, a little brackish water. The nearest fresh 
water is thirty miles distant. Fifteen miles to the north is a 
range of rocks, the highest points of which reach an elevation 
of not more than fifteen feet. In the middle part of this range 
is a deep excavation which has every appearance of an old 
silver mine. The debris about it, and other strong indications, 
seem to authorize the belief that it was formerly wrought for 
that precious metal. By whom was it wrought ? By whom 
was that city inhabited ? By what great convulsion of na¬ 
ture was it prostrated, and its gardens and grain fields changed 
to a thirsty desert ? Three Timpanigos Utaws whom my 
friend Lyman met could give no answers to these and the 
like inquiries, and they had no legends in regard to the origin 
of these ruins, or of others which they spoke of as existing in 
the north and west. Was not this the Cibola of the early 
explorers ; the land visited by the Jesuits—filled with people 
and wealth, and which the volcanic fires that even to this 
day groan tinder the whole western coast of America have 
seared into a homeless waste ? 
Doctor Lyman suffered so many hardships and privations 
while travelling down the Colorado, that he, as well as his 
animals, barely lived to reach the green fields and pure waters 
of the Californian Mountains. He found the country around 
the mouth of the river as dry, as salt, as uninviting in every 
respect, as any he had traversed. But striking off in a west¬ 
erly direction from a point about one day’s journey from its 
debouchure into the Californian Gulf, he arrived at a river 
of excellent water called the Amajaves. The source of this 
stream is in the marine range of Californian Mountains, im¬ 
mediately east of the Puebla de los Angelos, at a place called 
