however, the
groups are small. Sometimes two or more tiers of caves are superimposed.
From the objects scattered about and in the cells, and from the size and
disposition of the latter, it becomes evident that the people who
excavated and inhabited them were on the same level of culture as the
so-called Pueblo Indians of New Mexico.

It is not surprising, therefore, that some traditions and myths are
preserved to-day among the Pueblos concerning these cave-villages. Thus
the Tehua Indians of the pueblo of Santa Clara assert that the
artificial grottos of what they call the Puiye and the Shufinne, west of
their present abodes, were the homes of their ancestors at one time. The
Queres of Cochiti in turn declare that the tribe to which they belong,
occupied, many centuries before the first coming of Europeans to New
Mexico, the cluster of cave-dwellings, visible at this day although
abandoned and in ruins, in that romantic and picturesquely secluded
gorge called in the Queres dialect Tyuonyi, and in Spanish "El Rito de
los Frijoles."

The Rito is a beautiful spot. Situated in a direct line not over twenty
miles west of Santa Fe, it can still be reached only after a long day's
tedious travel. It is a narrow valley, nowhere broader than half a mile;
and from where it begins in the west to where it closes in a dark and
gloomy entrance, scarcely wide enough for two men to pass abreast, in
the east, its length does not exceed six miles. Its southern rim is
formed by the slope of a timbered mesa, and that slope is partly
overgrown by shrubbery. The northern border constitutes a line of
vertical cliffs of yellowish and white pumice, projecting and
re-entering like decorations of a stage,--now perpendicular and smooth
for some distance, now sweeping back in the shape of an arched segment.
These cliffs vary in height, although nowhere are they less than two
hundred feet. Their tops rise in huge pillars, in crags and pinnacles.
Brushwood and pine timber crown the mesa of which these fantastic
projections are but the shaggy border.

Through the vale itself rustles the clear and cool brook to which the
name of Rito de los Frijoles is applied. It meanders on, hugging the
southern slope, partly through open spaces, partly through groves of
timber, and again past tall stately pine-trees standing isolated in the
valley willows, cherry-trees, cottonwoods, and elders form small
thickets along its banks. The Rito is a permanent streamlet