upon the tops
of the mesa. Whether all the cave-dwellers were descended from the
original pilgrims or whether others had joined them afterward is not
known, but it seems evident that the separate communities had found some
common bond, probably tribal, and perhaps evolved some common
government. No doubt they intermarried. No doubt the blood of many
cliff-dwelling communities mingled in the new communities which built
pueblos upon the mesa. In time there were many of these pueblos, and
they were widely scattered; there are mounds at intervals all over the
Mesa Verde. The largest group of pueblos, one infers from the number of
visible mounds, was built upon the Chapin Mesa several miles north of
the above-mentioned cliff-dwelling near a reservoir known to-day as
Mummy Lake. It is there, then, that we shall now go in continuation of
our story.

[Illustration: PREHISTORIC POTTERY FROM MESA VERDE

Coloring and design as well as form show high artistic sense and clean
workmanship]

Mummy Lake is not a lake and no mummies were ever found there. This
old-time designation applies to an artificial depression surrounded by a
low rude stone wall, much crumbled, which was evidently a storage
reservoir for an irrigation system of some size. A number of conspicuous
mounds in the neighborhood suggest the former existence of a village of
pueblos dependent upon the farms for which the irrigation system had
been built. One of these, from which a few stones protruded, was
excavated in 1916 by Doctor Fewkes, and has added a new and important
chapter to the history of this people. This pueblo has been named Far
View House. Its extensive vista includes four other groups of similar
mounds. Each cluster occurs in the fertile sage-brush clearings which
bloom in summer with asters and Indian paint-brush; there is no doubt
that good crops of Indian corn could still be raised from these sands
to-day by dry-farming methods.

Far View House is a pueblo, a hundred and thirteen feet long by more
than fifty feet wide, not including a full-length plaza about
thirty-five feet wide in which religious dances are supposed to have
taken place. The differences between this fine structure and the
cliff-cities are considerable. The most significant evidence of
progress, perhaps, is the modern regularity of the ground-plan. The
partitions separating the secular rooms are continuous through the
building, and the angles are generally accurately right angles.