like a park
but shaded by the stately yellow pine, and all of it above ordinary
cloud-line, still girt by that snowy range of opal peaks beyond. We
followed the trail at a rattling pace--the Archaeological School had
placed signs on the trees to Frijoles Canyon--and presently, by great
mounds of building stone covered feet deep by the dust and debris of
ages, became aware that we were on historic ground. Nor can the theory
of drought explain the abandonment of this mesa. While it rains heavily
only two months in the year--July and August--the mesa is so high that
it is subject to sprinkling rains all months of the year; to be sure not
enough for springs, but ample to provide forage and grow corn; and for
water, these sky-top dwellers had access to the water canyons both
before and behind. What hunting ground it must have been in those old
days! Even yet you are likely to meet a flock of wild turkey face to
face; or see a mountain lion slink away, or hear the bark of coyote and
fox.

"Is this it, Gregoire?" I asked. The mound seemed irregularly to cover
several acres--pretty extensive remains, I thought.

"Ah, no--no Senorita--wait," warned Gregoire expectantly.

I had not to wait long. The wagon road suddenly broke off short and
plumb as if you tossed a biscuit over the edge of the Flatiron roof. I
got out and looked down and then--went dumb! Afterwards, Mrs. Judge
Abbott told me they thought I was afraid to come down. It wasn't that!
The thing so far surpassed anything I had ever dreamed or seen; and the
color--well--those artists accused of over-coloration could not have
over-colored if they had tried. Pigments have not been invented that
could do it!

Picture to yourself two precipices three times the height of Niagara,
three times the height of the Metropolitan Tower, sheer as a wall of
blocked yellow and red masonry, no wider apart than you can shout
across, ending in the snows of the Jemez to the right, shut in black
basalt walls to the left, forested with the heavy pines to the very edge
and down the blocky tiers of rocks and escarpments running into blind
angles where rain and sun have dyed the terra cotta pumice blood-red.
And picture the face of the cliff under your feet, the sides of the
massive rocks eroded to the shapes of tents and tepees and beehives,
pigeon-holed by literally thousands of windows and doors and arched
caves and winding recess and portholes--a city of the dead, silent as
the dead, old