esumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The
occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of
buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers
to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.

Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round
watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest
pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur
with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the life
of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the years,
perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red men
from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier families
at the hands of the same blood-thirsty savages is heart-rending. What
was it to those who saw year by year their whole race's life withering
away, crushed by those wild tribes?

Near the lower end of the canyon stands one of the most perfect of these
towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It
was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have
been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are
prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque
and as full of mystery as the round towers of Ireland....

In the Montezuma Canyon, just beyond the Colorado State border, there are
some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great size.
One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary mesa, is
constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the prehistoric masonry
of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line of
fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and
are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones
standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the
lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the
hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there
is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much
later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.

All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of
the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written
record of their existence, except their own rude picture-writing,
cut or painted on the canyon walls, and it is not likely that those
hieroglyphics will ever be de