to them.

For days they tried every means to reach the top, but they could not do
so. They could see their friends peering over at them, but day by day
the faces grew fewer and fewer, until at last all were gone.

Since then the mesa has been held sacred by the Acomas, and regarded by
them as a city of the dead.

This legend has been so thoroughly believed that scientists have often
discussed the possibility of scaling this rock for the sake of the
wonderful remains that must be on the top. Finally Professor Libbey
determined to make the attempt.

He took with him a life-saving apparatus, of the kind that is used on
the sea-coast for sending a line out to a wrecked vessel. His plan was
to throw the line over the rock, and then have himself hauled up in an
arrangement of ropes, used by sailors for working over the side of
ships, and called by them a boatswain's chair.

The life-saving apparatus was tried, and proved to be most successful. A
rocket was sent up with the life-line attached, and on the second effort
was shot clear over the rock.

The line thus thrown was a thin quarter-inch rope; to this a strong
hawser was attached, and after infinite labor pulled across the mesa's
top. The boatswain's chair was then attached, and with the aid of a pair
of strong horses, who pulled away at one end of the rope, the professor
was hauled to the top of the rock.

To his disappointment he found no traces whatever of former inhabitants,
and no evidences that any human being had ever trodden the rock's
surface before.

He found plenty of water standing in pools, which had evidently been
left from recent rains, and plenty of grass and trees similar to those
found on the summits of the other buttes in the neighborhood, but the
legend of the Acomas was evidently a myth.

He went from end to end of the Mesa, but there was not the slightest
sign of cave or dwelling, nor even a scrap of broken pottery to prove
that the rock had once been inhabited. G.H. ROSENFELD.

INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.

PORTABLE REFRIGERATING CASE.--It must be some one who loves to go on
picnics or excursions who has thought out this delightful contrivance, a
portable refrigerator. It comprises an inner case which holds bottles
and ice, and an outer case with a partition into which the water from
the ice can run, and with means for drawing it off.

[Illustration: Portable Refrigerating Case]

A fair supply of ice would insure bot