4 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
29 
out any reason offered for same, and 
gone cliff hunting. 
I saved the Cliff Dwellers and 
community houses for the finish of 
my trip, well knowing I could find 
little to interest me after I-had seen 
these ruins—vruins older than fire. 
And I saved them too long. I saw 
them, some of them, but under eir- 
cumstances that cannot do half jus- 
tice. 
I suppose I should have informed 
myself that what lttle winter New 
first to these ruins, 
Mexico has comes the latter part of 
February and the first of March, and 
had I done so, I would have gone 
and then to 
Old Mexico. But I didn’t take the 
- pains, and I lost out. 
But I saw the Cliff ruins, despite 
the deep snow and howling moun- 
tain blizzards. -I saw them and 
climbed up into them, inspected par- 
lor, bedroom and conservatory, sat 
there on the floor in the dust of ages, 
sat cross-legged as some cliff dweller 
had sat in same place thousands of 
‘years. ago—sat there and _ looked 
aeross the gorge from the doorway 
of this pre-historic home, and into 
my eyes came a picture— 
But into my toes came the frost, 
and into my ears came the hail of 
the driver below—and that picture 
,of a Forgotten Past faded, before I 
could catch the colors. 
What of the Chiff Dwellers? You 
tell. We Americans know little of 
them, and the more I learn of them 
the less I know. 
Through Arizona and New Mexico 
are hundreds of their ruins. We 
know people, human beings, once 
lived in them, and that is about all 
we do know. Anybody here ean tell 
_ you who they were, where they came 
from and where they went to, but no 
one will tell you anything that has - 
even a speaking distance connection 
with what the other fellow ex- 
_ plained, so I read what little I ean 
t 
find about them, hear a whole lot of 
what everybody ean tell—and then 
guess. 
Under favorable conditions 
couldn’t a man writes his head off 
with these surroundings? Sitting in 
the homes of these mysterious peo- 
ple, in the crumbling ruins of what 
were once the only human_habita- 
tions of this great country of ours, 
sitting in the dust of ages and think- 
_ ing of the first Americans who lived, 
loved and labored here—where 
wouldn’t this pencil run to, if it 
were only spring time, if the frost 
would let up on my great toe, and if 
_ the driver would stop wrecking my 
- trains of thought by his yelling that 
in. 
we must hurry back. 
I had planned miles and miles and 
days and days among these ruins, 
and only had three hours. 
The plaee where I visited was 
where our unknown ancestors had 
built their homes many feet up the 
side of the cliff—dug them back into 
the lava rock. It is said that in the 
early days when these homes were 
dug out, that certain stratas were 
soft, and that pieces of glass-like 
lava formation in the hands of these 
prehistoric men, served as chisels to 
scoop out homes, and that the mak- 
ing was easy. They were indepen- 
dent of lumber trusts furnishing 
combinations. When a young Cliff 
Dweller wanted a home he hunted a 
soft strata up the side of a Cliff. He 
burned off a cedar tree, and used it 
for a ladder to climb up, and then he 
scooped out a residence. As time 
wore on, and doubtless several little 
Cliffs showed up, then pa dug out a 
kitchen at the back—or rather dug 
on an extension. 
But most of the houses are one 
room, built from a shelf of the Chiff, 
many feet from the bottom. They 
run along like streets, following the 
soft strata, and they are parallel 
streaks of what was once, no doubt 
hard and soft stratas, the hard tsarta 
forming the roof of the dweller un- 
derneath and the floor of the flat 
above. 
The rooms are small, something 
like ten feet square, and from five to 
eight feet high. In many of them 
one cannot stand erect, and in the 
one I occupied I had to stoop when 
standing. Very few have loop holes 
for windows, and the doors are very 
low and Just wide enough to squeeze 
It is very evident that doors 
served as chimneys also; and I won- 
der how Miss Cliff ever squeezed 
through without getting her shirt- 
waist sooty. 
These homes were certainly built 
for protection. They were built 
high so. that owners could pull up by 
their rope ladders and pull them af- 
ter them, and the small doors and ab- 
sence of windows plainly indicate 
that these were strenuous days and 
the Dweller who lived long was he 
who had his ladder up and his bow 
strung. 
Where and how they got water is 
to me the one weak joint in their ar- 
mor, and it seems to me all the ene- 
my would have to do would be to lay 
siege to the stream at the foot of the 
Cliffs, and kill off the Dwellers when 
they came down to fill their pottery. 
My driver had planned a trip for 
me to some of the ruins where he 
 feabaiegtohcet tesa bch deertetriabs 0 
$x Maurhester  § 
Deena eae ct 
Wedding invitations are out for 
the wedding on Wednesday, June 15, 
at 4 o’clock, of Miss Minnie Olsen, 
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. N. Martin 
Olsen, and Robert Allen. 
Height-McGregor. 
At the home of the groom’s 
brother, Edward C. Height, on Des- 
mond avenue, Alden I[leight and 
Christine McGregor were united in 
marriage by the Rev. Theodore [iy- 
man Frost,- Wednesday. evening. 
The ceremony was witnessed only 
by the immediate relatives. The par- 
lor was prettily decorated with 
ferns and early summer blossoms. 
Mr. Height and his bride will re- 
side in Warwick, Mass. 
said probably not a dozen white 
men’s feet had ever entered, and 
where I could dig for hours with 
none to stop me. He said that he 
knew*of homes that he did not be- 
lieve had ever been. explored, and 
where one could find no end of pot- 
tery, relics and the bones of these 
our unknown ancestors. 
Do you wonder at my disappoint- 
ment? I looked out of the door from 
the Cliff house, looked up through 
the blinding snow at where there 
should be a sun, and if ever a man 
hoped for a rift in the clouds, it was 
the man pushing this pencil. But 
there was no hope. The trip must be 
abandoned, and in despair | dug 
into the dust in the floor of the 
house, dug into the accumulations of 
centuries of solitude, looking for 
some little relic of the day when 
these mysterious people were alive, 
and looked from this Cliff house as | 
now looked. 
But I am going back to 
ruins, going back to lve days and 
nights in these houses, going back 
tc raise blisters on my hands in dig- 
cing for rehes. And I am going at 
a time when there are no snow- 
storms—in the early days of fall, to 
chase out the rock squirrels, and 
find out more of these forgotten 
people. 
Then I am going further west, into 
Arizona, and visit the buried cities 
there, and the mummy eaves. You 
don’t know anything of them, do. 
you? I did not until I got into this 
wonderland, and found that just 
ahead of me, no matter how far I 
went, were more strange and won- 
derful ruins and sights, 
these 
