s.

The region has a wonderful scenic charm. It is markedly different in
quality from other national parks, but in its own way is quite as
startling and beautiful. Comparison is impossible because of the lack of
elements in common, but it may be said that the Mesa Verde represents
our great southwest in one of its most fascinating phases, combining the
fundamentals of the desert with the flavor of the near-by mountains. The
canyons, which are seven or eight hundred feet deep and two or three
times as wide where the cliff-dwellings gather, are prevailingly tawny
yellow. Masses of sloping talus reach more than half-way up; above them
the cliffs are perpendicular; it is in cavities in these perpendiculars
that the cliff-dwellings hide. Above the cliffs are low growths of
yellowish-green cedar with pinyons and other conifers of darker foliage.
Beneath the trees and covering the many opens grows the familiar sage of
the desert, a gray which hints at green and yellow both but realizes
neither. But the sage-brush shelters desert grasses, and, around the
occasional springs and their slender outlets, grass grows rank and
plenteous; a little water counts for a great deal in the desert.

[Illustration: OUTLINE OF THE MESA VERDE FORMATION

Showing the manner in which water erosion is reducing the plains to
canyons and mesas. The Mesa Verde cliff-dwellers built their homes in
caves in the perpendicular cliffs above the sloping talus]

Summer, then, is delightful on the Mesa Verde. The plateau is high and
the air invigorating, warm by day in midsummer, always cool at night.
The atmosphere is marvellously clear, and the sunsets are famous. The
winter snows, which reach three or four feet in depth, disappear in
April. From May to Thanksgiving the region is in its prime. It is
important to realize that this land has much for the visitor besides its
ruins. It has vigor, distinction, personality, and remarkable charm. It
is the highest example of one of America's most distinctive and
important scenic phases, and this without reference to its prehistoric
dwellings. No American traveller knows his America, even the great
southwest, who does not know the border-land where desert and forest
mingle.

The Southern Ute Indian Reservation bites a large rectangle from the
southeast corner of the park, but its inhabitants are very different in
quality of mind and spirit from the ancient and reverent builders of Sun
Temple. Reservation Indians