INSCRIPTION ROCK—OJO PESCADO—LAVA. 
39 
Lieutenant Whipple’s description of the form of this remarkable rock. Approaching its north¬ 
east corner, which is rectangular, the cliffs appear truly vertical and smooth to the height of 
nearly 200 feet. Here are found the Spanish inscriptions and the Indian hieroglyphics. 
Upon the eastern face the rock projects somewhat like a bastion. At the reentering angle there 
is a semi-cylindrical recess, slightly shelving and as smooth as if a cascade had poured for ages 
over the top. Below is a spring or pool of water, supplying the camp, but affording barely 
sufficient for the mules and cattle. The summit of the rock, which is of white sandstone with 
a yellowish tinge, is broken so as to present at a distance the appearance of turrets like a 
Moorish castle, from which its Spanish name was derived. 1 Lieutenant Simpson describes the 
rock as a quadrangular mass of sandstone, of a pearly-whitish aspect, from 200 to 250 feet in 
height, and strikingly peculiar on account of its massive character, and the Egyptian style of 
its buttresses and domes. 2 The drawings made by Mr. Kern, and published in Lieutenant 
Simpson’s report, show at once the stratified and horizontal character of the rock. It must be 
composed of very thick beds of homogeneous sandstone, without coarse pebbles, or many part¬ 
ings of the strata, or alternation with shales. According to Mr. Marcou, the rock is a rose- 
colored sandstone, the same which is seen along the valley leading from the pass of the Sierra 
Madre. This rock appears to be a remnant of the wide table-lands, and stands alone, very 
much like the Tucumcari hill in the valley of the Canadian. Its peculiar vertical bluffs, with 
the flat, smooth side-faces, result entirely from natural causes—the erosion of the streams and 
the slow, and indeed almost imperceptible wearing produced by the weather. The inscriptions 
become exceedingly interesting to the geologist, for the evidence which they afford of the 
remarkably slow disintegration of this sandstone. This rock, although soft enough to receive 
the inscriptions with ease, has retained the finest lines of writing which was cut two hundred 
and fifty years ago. The Indian hieroglyphics, alone, show the effects of long exposure, and 
how great their age must be when the lapse of two hundred and fifty years does not suffice to 
dim the clearness of an inscription. 
These peculiar and isolated hills, with their level summits and inaccessible vertical sides, are 
well fitted for the abode of warlike savage tribes, and the former inhabitants have not failed to 
avail themselves of the advantages which they present. The stone which was used for con¬ 
structing the buildings, the ruins of which are described by Lieutenant Whipple and others, 
was probably quarried from the sides of the bluff. 
Ojo Pescado .—A stream of lava extends across the route a short distance west of Inscription 
rock, and another is found farther west, and this follows or lies along the bottom of the valley 
which received and gave it its direction when it was a molten river of rock. Now, it is entirely 
cold and covered by a soil resulting in part from its decomposition. The expedition followed 
this grass-covered lava for fourteen miles, until it reached a break where a beautiful spring 
gushes out and forms a running stream. Here, then, we have the usurpation of a river valley 
by a river of melted rock which has obliterated all trace of the water for a long distance, but 
which probably permits its underground flow, with but little or no diminution of its former 
volume. The spring may be regarded as the reappearance of the stream after its long flow 
under its rocky covering. Only a short distance below, a second and similar spring and stream 
was found. Both of these springs were surrounded by ruins which are supjrosed to be very 
ancient. They were probably built at those points in order to enjoy the water of the springs. 
The lava stream was therefore much older than the buildings, as indeed is shown by its soil- 
covered surface. It appears a very plausible explanation of the desertion of these once exten¬ 
sive settlements, that incursions of lava dried up or covered the water-courses, destroyed agri¬ 
cultural land, and drove the inhabitants away in alarm. It is not improbable that overflows 
from the volcanoes of that region have taken place within the historic period; but, although the 
streams, and indeed the great body of the lava, is very recent, the position of the ruins at this 
1 Lieutenant Whipple’s Report, p. 64. 
8 Simpson’s Navajo Report, p. 120. 
