eir exchanging their large pueblo at the
bottom for a residence on the top it is very much as if the good people
of New York City should spend Christmas week on the Catskill Range, or
the Bostonians take winter quarters on Mount Monadnock. We followed the
crest of the mesa for nearly four miles, ascending two of its highest
tops. They are steep, denuded, and craggy. Beneath them vertical ledges
descend in amphitheatres. From the highest point the horizon to the
south appears unbounded. Like a small cone, the peak of Bernal seems to
guard the lowest end of the Valley of Pecos. Over this vale rain-clouds
still cast their shadows, and distant thunder muttered behind the Owl
Mountains and the high Sierras in the north. To the west and south-west
are almost unlimited expanses of slope, dark green pineries, and grassy
spots. The bold outline of the Sandia Mountains looms up stately beyond
it. Even the distant Sierra de Jemez protrudes. Between it and the
northern limits of the mesa lies, far off yet, the city of Santa Fe.

The mesa is mostly yellow sandstone, but its highest points are capped
with red; therefore the name of "Cerro amarillo" often applied to it.
Through a gorge worn in the rock, and on an almost perpendicular
"burro-trail," we finally descended to the apron of the plateau,
surrounded during our descent by scenery as weird and wild as any of the
lower Alps of Switzerland. On the lower edge of the apron, a mile and a
half north of Kingman, and half a mile from the railroad track, we
struck again several ruins. They were partitioned rectangles, very
similar in size and in condition to the foundations seen south of the
old church of Pecos, and, like those, utterly devoid of fragments of
pottery. Along their eastern line, and inside of the walls, there
appeared little square heaps of stones. These were the graves of which
my guide had spoken, and their position is exactly similar to that of
those near and at the pueblo itself.[130]

My time was up, however, and I could not stop to explore them. I
therefore returned to Baughl's, and thence to Santa Fe, with the firm
determination to revisit Pecos at a future day, and then do what I was
compelled reluctantly to leave undone this time. Should, in the mean
time, some archaeologist explore the same locality, correct my errors,
and unravel the mysteries hovering about the place, I heartily wish him
as much pleasure and quiet enjoyment as I have had during my ten days'
w