es of
mankind have usually reached this art soon after their discovery of
fire. In fact, such an invention is almost inevitable. Thus, an early
method of cooking food has always been to put it into a basket
smeared with clay, which is supported over a fire. The clay served
the double purpose of preventing liquids from escaping and protecting
the basket from the flame. Now, even the dullest savage could not
have failed to notice, after a time, that the clay became hardened by
the fire, and in that state was sufficient for his purpose without
the basket. Simple as it seems, the discovery of this fact marks an
important epoch in the progress of every primitive race, and some
authorities on ethnology distinguish the two great divisions of
Savagery and Barbarism by placing in the lower grade those who have
not arrived at the knowledge of making pottery.

[Illustration: THE TOP OF THE MESA ENCANTADA.]

[Illustration: THE APPROACH TO ACOMA.]

Soon after passing this haunted rock, and driving further over the
_mesa_-dotted plain, we came in sight of the weird city of the sky
called Acoma. It occupies the summit of a table-land, the ascent to
which is now a winding defile, flanked by frowning cliffs. Even this
path, though readily ascended on horseback, is too precipitous and
sandy for a wagon. Accordingly, as none of our party that day enjoyed
the privilege of being an equestrian, we left our vehicle at the foot
of the _mesa,_ and completed the journey on foot. Some adventurous
spirits, however, chose a short cut up the precipice along a natural
fissure in the rocks, which, having been transformed with loose
stones into a kind of ladder, was formerly, before these peaceful
times, the only means of access to the summit. A steeper scramble
would be hard to find. I must confess, however, that before taking
either of these routes, we halted to enjoy a lunch for which the
drive had given us the keenest appetite, and which we ate _al fresco_
in the shadow of a cliff, surrounded by a dozen curious natives.
Then, the imperious demands of hunger satisfied, we climbed three
hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding plain, and stood in what
is, with perhaps the exception of Zuni, the oldest inhabited town in
North America. Before us, on what seemed to be an island of the air,
was a perfect specimen of the aboriginal civilization found here by
the Spanish conqueror, Coronado, and his eager gold-seekers, in 1540.
For now, as then, th