a dead city? Lummis says "yes;" Hodge says "no." Both men climbed the
rock, though Hill Ki tells me confidentially they "were very scare,"
when it came to throwing a rope up over the end of the rock, to pull the
climber up as if by pulley. Marmon and Pratt have both been up; and Hill
Ki tells me so have two venturesome white women climbers, whose names he
does not know, but "they weren't scare." As we pass from the end to the
side of the Enchanted Mesa, it is seen to be an oblong slab utterly cut
off from all contact but so indented halfway up at one end as to be
ascended by a good climber to within distance of throwing a rope over
the top. The quarrel between Lummis and Hodge has waxed hotter and
hotter as to the Enchanted Mesa without any finale to the dispute; and
far be it from an outsider like myself to umpire warfare amid the gods
of the antiquarian; but isn't it possible that a custom among the Acoma
Indians may explain the whole matter; and that both men may be partly
right? Miss McLain, who was in the Indian Service at Laguna, reports
that once an Indian family told her of this Acoma ceremony. Before a
youth reaches manhood, while he is still being instructed in the
mysteries of Hopi faith in the underground council room or _kiva_, it is
customary for the Acomas to blindfold him and send him to the top of the
Enchanted Mesa for a night's lonely vigil with a jar of water as
oblation to the spirits. These jars explain the presence of pottery,
which Lummis describes. They would also give credence to at least
periodic inhabiting of the Mesa. The absence of house ruins, on the
other hand, would explain why Hodge scouted Lummis' theory. The Indians
explained to Miss McLain that a boy could climb blindfolded where he
could not go open-eyed, a fact that all mountain engineers will
substantiate.

[Illustration: A shy little Indian maid in a Hopi village of Arizona]

But what matters the quarrel? Is not the whole region an Enchanted Mesa,
one of the weirdest bits of the New World? You have barely rounded the
Enchanted Mesa, when another oblong colossus looms to the fore, sheer
precipice, but accessible by tiers of sand and stone at the far end;
that is, accessible by handhold and foothold. Look again! Along the top
of the walled precipice, a crest to the towering slab, is a human wall,
the walls of an adobe streetful of houses, little windows looking out
flush with the precipice line like the portholes of a ship. Then