From an elevated point of rock, as high up as I could well climb, I
decided both questions with my glass. The tomb resembled nothing so
much as a mud-wasp's nest, high on a barn wall. The fact that it had
never been broken open quite carried Wallace away with enthusiasm.

"This is no mean discovery, let me tell you that," he declared. "I am
familiar with the Aztec, Toltec and Pueblo ruins, and here I find no
similarity. Besides, we are out of their latitude. An ancient race of
people--very ancient indeed lived in this canyon. How long ago, it is
impossible to tell."

"They must have been birds," said the practical Jones. "Now, how'd that
tomb ever get there? Look at it, will you?"

As near as we could ascertain, it was three hundred feet from the
ground below, five hundred from the rim wall above, and could not
possibly have been approached from the top. Moreover, the cliff wall
was as smooth as a wall of human make.

"There's another one," called out Jones.

"Yes, and I see another; no doubt there are many of them," replied
Wallace. "In my mind, only one thing possible accounts for their
position. You observe they appear to be about level with each other.
Well, once the Canyon floor ran along that line, and in the ages gone
by it has lowered, washed away by the rains."

This conception staggered us, but it was the only one conceivable. No
doubt we all thought at the same time of the little rainfall in that
arid section of Arizona.

"How many years?" queried Jones.

"Years! What are years?" said Wallace. "Thousands of years, ages have
passed since the race who built these tombs lived."

Some persuasion was necessary to drag our scientific friend from the
spot, where obviously helpless to do anything else, he stood and gazed
longingly at the isolated tombs. The canyon widened as we proceeded;
and hundreds of points that invited inspection, such as overhanging
shelves of rock, dark fissures, caverns and ruins had to be passed by,
for lack of time.

Still, a more interesting and important discovery was to come, and the
pleasure and honor of it fell to me. My eyes were sharp and peculiarly
farsighted--the Indian sight, Jones assured me; and I kept them
searching the walls in such places as my companions overlooked.
Presently, under a large, bulging bluff, I saw a dark spot, which took
the shape of a figure. This figure, I recollected, had been presented
to my sight more than once, and now it stopped me. The har