of country in Utah,
Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of
the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people.
On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their
villages,--rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large
circular _estufas_, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of
the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the canons are scattered in
every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which give
us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten people.
And on commanding points, seen far away down the canons or across the
mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might signal to
the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians....

There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so great
a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the canyon of
the Little Rio Mancos in Southwestern Colorado. The stream rises in a
spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp called
Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open valley,
it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound canyon which cuts for
nearly thirty miles through a table-land called the Mesa Verde. The
canyon is wide enough to have permitted the old inhabitants to plant
their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either side to
a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and grooved
and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata and the
projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities for building
fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence. Therefore the
whole length of the canyon is filled with ruins, and for fifteen miles
beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the river meets the Rio
San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the ancient occupation.

The scenery of the canyon is wild and imposing in the highest degree. In
the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or weather-stains to dull the
brightness of the strata to the universal hoariness of moister climates:
the vertical cliffs, standing above long slopes of debris, are colored
with the brilliant tints of freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of
green follows the course of the rivulet winding down through the canyon
till it is lost to sight in the vista of crags. The utter silence and
solitude of the wilderness reigns through the valley. It is no