XIVBEYOND THE RANGES.

CAÑON OF THE RIO DE LAS ANIMAS.

In the summer of 1881, however, the remnants of the gang of desperadoes who had infested Durango during the winter, tried to make Silverton a rendezvous, and one night killed an inoffensive and highly esteemed officer, who was aiding a sheriff to arrest one of their number. It was the culmination of many atrocities, and the citizens at once resuscitated their Vigilance Committee. One of the ruffians was apprehended the same night, and quietly hung the following evening. Large rewardswere offered, detectives and sheriffs set at work, and finally the leading spirit of evil was captured by the treachery of his most trusted ally in previous villainies. After some delay this prisoner was brought to Silverton in charge of his Judas-like comrade, who took his reward and rode swiftly away, distrusting the pledge of the citizens that he should go safely out of town. This was on Friday. The prisoner was locked up, and strong relays of heavily armed guards, chosen from men of respectability and standing in the community relieved each other at the jail night and day, until Sunday morning came, and with it a cold, dismal storm.

All day the rain fell steadily down, and the air was clammy with chill mist. Dense banks of clouds were packed into the dripping gulches, capped the hidden summits and clung in ragged masses among the trees that darkly clothed the sides of the mountains. Occasional gusts of wind drove the storm hard against the window panes, but for the most part rain fell quietly, the streets became avenues of inky paste, and the darkness of evening gathered early about the town, settling like a pall upon all the waiting people in it.

Everyone knew, though the majority could hardly say why, that the hour of fate had come. As the night thickened, men gathered on the corners nearest the jail, and, unmindful of the persistent rain, stood talking in low tones to two or three listeners whose faces were close together and strangely serious. Moving here and there were other little groups, their footsteps hardly heard in the soft mire, and their voices hushed,—moving chiefly up and down the alley where the jail stood.

The saloons and gambling-rooms were open, but the dance-hall, which last night echoed so late to the clatter of heavy boots and the shouts of half drunken revelry, was closed, and the few women who haunted the other liquor dens seemed to have forgotten their coarse jibes and laid aside their accustomed wiles. The soft rattle of the thin faro-checks, the clink of silver lost and won, and the louder crack of billiard-balls, were heard as usual, only more distinctly, while the monotonous “ante-up, gents!” “Are you all ready?” “The deuce wins,” and so on, of the imperturbable dealers, mingled in a sort of minor music to which all sharper sounds were accordantly attuned. But the players were moderate in their stakes, and the ordinary excitement of the smoke-dimmed rooms was hushed.

Still fell the rain drearily. The stern guards about the jail hugged their rifles under their arms, to keep them dry at the breech, and now and then tipped streams of water out of the broad hollow brims of theirsombreros. In the log gaol the murderer lay upon his couch, apparently sound asleep, and the inside sentinels rested their guns on their knees and counted the moments until their watch should be over. Nine o’clock came and passed without note. Nine o’clock and thirty minutes was marked on the cold face of the clock, when the key grated in the ironlock, the door opened a little way and three masked men glided in, shutting the door behind them. One brought with him a rope, which he fastened into a staple set in one of the rafters, standing upon a chair which gave him only height enough just to reach the beam. Another touched the prisoner, and told him his time had come. That afternoon he had assured his keepers that they would see “as brave a death as ever went out of that prison.” It was no surprise, then, to see this boy (for he was scarcely twenty) rise coolly from his bed and walk to where the chair had been placed underneath the dangling noose. Perhaps he would have liked to have shaken hands, had not his arms been manacled behind his back; but instead, pausing a moment ere he took his place, and without a tremor, he simply said, “Well,adios, boys!” Then, stepping up, he inclined his head and himself set it well within the noose. There was a touch of the rope to tighten the knot, a snatching aside of the chair, and the outlaw had “gone over the range,” beyond all further harm or doing of it.

Then the jail was locked, and few knew, even at midnight, whether or not the retribution had come. There was no boisterousness, no gloating over vengeance satisfied, less of mirth and curiosity, than I ever saw in a community where an execution under the sanction of law was taking place. It was more an awe-struck feeling of a terrible necessity, as if an impending calamity was at hand, or some great affliction present.

Next morning the coroner’s jury met, and a ray of light was shot across the sombre picture; the verdict said:

“Came to his death from hanging ’round!”

All the means of action—The shapeless masses, the materials—Lie everywhere about us.

All the means of action—

The shapeless masses, the materials—

Lie everywhere about us.

—Longfellow.

Three districts require mention before this corner of the state is bidden farewell,—Ophir, Rico and the La-Plata mountains.

Ophir lies fifteen miles east of Silverton and on the Pacific slope, for it is at one source of the Rio Dolores. It is reached by a wagon-road up Mineral Creek, which is one of the most “scenic routes” I know of in Colorado. At first there is not much to call forth admiration; nearing the top, however, a remarkable picture presents itself. In a closely guarding circle of purplish peaks, stand two isolated mountains of entirely different character and most striking appearance. Instead of the vertical cliffs, serrated and splintered summits and ragged gray of the majority of the mountains, these are as rounded and smooth on top as if they had been shaved by a lawn mower, and rise in unbroken slopes far above the blackish masses of timber which closely envelope their bases. It is their color, however, that makes them so grandly conspicuous. Long strokes of orange and rust color extend up and down from the spruces to the apex, streaked with bright red and set off with upright lines of glowing yellow, all softly blended together and crossed by a crowd of hair-lines, wavy and level with the horizon, like the plumage of a canvas-back duck. Stand where you will on the eastern side of this divide between the Animas and the San Miguel, and these great, smooth, cushiony hills of red, tower up level with your eye, burning under the sunlight.

At last the road rises above timber line, but even to the last verge, the soil under the trees is crowded with flowers and all sorts of pretty herbage, among which the strawberry takes precedence in point of abundance. Then the track lies underneath beetling cliffs which have crumbled into long tall, and the pass itself is only the triangular depression between two opposite slides. On one side here the rock is brown and broken almost as fine as railway ballast; on the other the fragments rule much larger in size, are of bluish trachyte and completely covered everywhere with a stone-lichen hardly thicker than paint, whichgives them a decidedly green color, while the brown rocks opposite are entirely devoid of lichens.

Down this jumble of fallen rocks—the scene of one incessant slow avalanche from the weather-crumbled crests still remaining above—the road passes by a steep and tortuous grade, made somewhat smooth by filling the crevices with small stuff; but the result would make the ghost of McAdam turn a shade paler.

These vast “slides” are a prominent feature in every landscape in southern Colorado. The volcanic rock with which all the mountains are capped, has a natural cleavage in two directions, and rapidly disintegrates, even under the air. On the quiet, still days of midsummer, you continually hear the rattle of pieces of rock which have fallen untouched from some scarp or pinnacle, and are racing down the steep talus below. The winter, however, is the time of greatest destruction. Into the thousand cracks and crannies the rains and snows of autumn pour floods of water, which penetrate the inmost recesses of the well-seamed crags. Then comes a frost. The little veins and pockets of water expand with a sudden force, combined and irresistible. Perhaps some huge projection of cliff flies to pieces as though filled full of exploding dynamite; perhaps a stronger body of frost behind it pries off the whole mass at once, and it dashes head-long down the side of the mountain, to scatter widely its cracked shell and leave the core a huge bowlder, which crashes its way far into the struggling woods at the foot of the rough slope. This process goes on, season after season, until finally the thousands of feet of summit, which once towered proudly above the mountain’s base, have been crumbled down to a level with the top of the debris-slope. If the rock is very soft, then the process goes on with each fallen block, until it is reduced to soil and forms a smooth, grassy slope, or a clean shaven but barren slide, like the rich red hills we saw on the other side of Lookout; but if the fragments are hard, then gradually the bushes and grass will creep up, and the forest will follow as high as climate and snow-fall will let it grow, and above will be a rounded crest of broken lava, like Veta mountain—the worst thing to climb in the wide world.

From the long, slanting niche which lets the road down across this broken and sliding rock, where men are always at work to throw aside the ceaselessly falling crumbs of the cliff, one gets his first view of Ophir gulch,—a valley half a dozen miles in length, without an acre of level ground in the whole of it. This end is closed by Lookout mountain, the opposite by the lofty crags of Mt. Wilson. On the north, Silver mountain cuts the sky in ragged outline, and, braced against its base, Yellow mountain rises straight from the creek-side to an almost equal altitude. In the crevice between stand the score or so of log cabins, which constitute what many persons consider the liveliest camp in the whole San Juan.

It is only eight years since the value of this locality was made known, but now the mountains on both sides of the gulch are pitted like a pepper-box with prospecting tunnels, and there are perhaps twenty mines shipping ore in profitable quantities, even under the great disadvantages of their isolation. The leads in general run northeast and southwest, but good openings have been found all the way from the brink of the creek to the shattered combing that casts its ragged shadow down the long, white slopes. Systematic development has been carried on in very few mines as yet, but the indications promise great things for the future. Half a dozen gold workings in particular are very rich, and several sales have been made exceeding $50,000 for a single location.

Remounting, the ride homeward through the mellow afternoon, was very delightful. The mountains rose on either side high above where the hardiest trees could manage to exist, gorgeously stained in great chevrons of red, orange and rust yellow. Lookout and its brother peaks seemed vast stacks of triangles, all upright and baseless, backed with long slides of varied umber tints. On some of these slides the grass has grown, long tongues of it penetrating far toward the bright walls overhead, while elsewhere mile-wide slopes of grayish white lie untouched by any blemish or projection. Everything is triangular,—the outlines of the peaks and the reverse in the gorges between; the shape of the fallen fragments; of the long spear-points of verdure that climb them, and of the trees and even the separate leaves that blend into those acute green patches; of the broad strokes of vivid color that have been painted so lavishly on these splendid slopes; even of the splitting and cleavage of every cliff-face and toppling spire that glistens in the slanting light and throws a slender-pointed shadow across the velvet brim of the valley.

Backward, where the forests lie unbroken on the southern wall of the gulch, long ranks and patches of aspens were interspersed with the reigning evergreens, and these the frosts had touched with various hues from its full palette—bright green still where the leaves were protected, yellow on the warm side of the ridges, vivid orange and scarlet along the crests,—so that these patches glowed like red and yellow flame against the dark spruces and firs.

Near timber-line there is a remarkable picture. Down from the northern mountain there trickle reddish streamlets over a space several rods in width. A few yards below the road all this water collects itself into a basin, which, begun by some trivial obstruction, has been able to build up its walls by slow deposition, until a great iron tank, with walls twenty-five or thirty feet high, and several feet thick, contains all but a trickling overflow of the mineral water. This tank is surrounded with pretty trees, and its wavy red outline holds a fountain as richly green as an emerald; or blue if you look at it from some one of the surroundingheights, so that the Spanish way of calling a springojo—an eye—seems very natural.

Beyond this highly tinted natural reservoir, built out like a balcony on the steep hillside, you look across to undulating verdant knolls, where shapely trees are scattered thinly, up beyond a deep maroon slope, falling from a noble, iron brown bluff, and so on away to the gray and lofty peaks, in whose rifts and vertical gorges the shadow lies blue as the farther edge of the sea, and whose clustering, cumulative spires, culminate in gleaming apices of snow.

ON THE RIVER OF LOST SOULS.

Rico is the next point. It is accessible from the north by wagon roads, but the entrance from this side is by stage from Rockwood Station on the railway, midway between Durango and Silverton. The road bears northward, and the views to the eastward are far-reaching and noble. The traveler alive to the resources of the region, will note the rich, thick grass, and the great pine timber, with poplars between to serve for log house and fencing purposes; he will also regret the limited possibilities for agriculture. Toward the head of this valley the woods thicken, and the road gets rougher and starts up the long slope that ultimately carries it over the hill. The ragged outlines of the San Miguel range come into view ahead, while the valley below, a solid “heather” of scrubby oak bushes, briers, ferns, and so on, seems carpeted in a queer design of tints of green and yellow, interspersed with all the mixtures of orange, scarlet and crimson that the deft fingers of the early frost could devise.

Over the long hill and past the spruces, an hour’s trotting takes the buckboard through the long hay meadows of Hermosa park, whence it ascends a four-mile hill to the summit of the last range dividing the waters of the Rio Las Animas from those of the Rio Dolores. And how we rattle down that Dolores slope! An Englishman riding on the Pennsylvania’s sixty-miles an hour train from New York to Philadelphia, the other day, exclaimed, “It’s wonderful! I think if something should drop one of you Yankees astride a thunderbolt, the first thing you would do would be to say, ‘chk! chk!’” I thought of that as we started, almost at a gallop, down that steep and winding mountain road. Corners—we snapped around them. Hollows and ridges—we bounced into and out of them. Down long, rough slopes, cut in the side of a hill so steep that just under the hub it fell away hundreds of feet almost like a precipice; down through the full blaze of the afternoon rays in the frost-turned aspens, where

“Tremulous, floating in air, o’er depths of azure abysses,Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors,”

“Tremulous, floating in air, o’er depths of azure abysses,

Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors,”

we rushed at a pace that Phæton, in his first hours of freedom, might have enjoyed in his chariot, but which to us, in an old buckboard, was simply torture. Why we didn’t pitch off the imminent verge, why we didn’t fall to pieces against some one of the thousand rocks we assaulted, why our bones were not broken and our diaphragms bursted, is incomprehensible.

Rico is situated in the center of a volcanic upburst which has parted the sandstones and limestones once spread thousands of feet thick over the area, and whose edges now stand as bold bluffs all around this break, which is nearly four miles in breadth and about eight in length. The town itself is made up of a scattered, gardenless collection of log cabins and some frame buildings, with a log suburb called Tenderfoot Town, and numbers about six hundred people. It is very dull, compared with most Colorado camps, but this is owing to the fact that everybody is waiting until the railway gets a little nearer.

The Rico mines are characterized by their great dissimilarity with each other. Nearly every sort of ore, of both silver and gold, is found mingled in a most heterogeneous way among the lavas, recalling that marvelously mixed mineralogical madrigal in the Colorado comic opera,Brittle Silver.

“I have found out a gift for my fair,I have found where the cálcites abound,Where sklópsite and zírcon appearWith sárcolite scattered around.“Then come love, and never say nay;With picrosmine thy heart I’ll delight,With diaspore and mangandblend gay,And phármakósideríte.”

“I have found out a gift for my fair,I have found where the cálcites abound,Where sklópsite and zírcon appearWith sárcolite scattered around.

“I have found out a gift for my fair,

I have found where the cálcites abound,

Where sklópsite and zírcon appear

With sárcolite scattered around.

“Then come love, and never say nay;With picrosmine thy heart I’ll delight,With diaspore and mangandblend gay,And phármakósideríte.”

“Then come love, and never say nay;

With picrosmine thy heart I’ll delight,

With diaspore and mangandblend gay,

And phármakósideríte.”

Some true fissure-veins exist, but more irregular deposits, and both “lead” and “dry” ores occur, often in contiguous claims. The richest ores thus far are those without lead; where galena occurs it is mixed with so much zinc and antimony as to make it troublesome in treatment. A galena ore here, which will show a mill-run of thirty ounces (my authority is Mr. Amos Lane, superintendent of the smelter), is considered very good.

Rico has not yet worked far enough into her very numerous “locations” to make sure of the riches her mountains are supposed to contain. There is no doubt that the cliffs about her are full of silver and gold, stored up in what, under more favorable circumstances, would be profitable quantities; also that there is in the near neighborhood a magnificent supply of bituminous and “free-burning anthracite” coal, good material for charcoal, limestone for flux, bog and magnetic iron, fire-clay and good building stone. The time will come, then, when Rico will be able cheaply to treat its own product, but this will be after wagon-roads and railways have come nearer, and outside capital has lent its strength to bring to the surface the hidden, or only partially exposed, treasures of the veins.

South of the San Juan range, and somewhat isolated, is the noble La Plata group of mountains. They are volcanic, like the rest, and, of course, of Alpine appearance, while their slopes, lying far south, produce so many varieties of foliage, that they often present real bits of beauty—a word having rare application in Colorado’s scenery. These mountains were prospected eight or ten years ago, and a placer bar of supposed extraordinary value was found near the head of the Rio La Plata by a company of California miners. I remember very well the picturesque little camp they had there, and the day they got their first butter for nine months. Having interested in the locality Mr. Parrott, a California capitalist, a town grew there rapidly, called Parrott City, now only sixteen miles from Durango, and arrangements were made for working the placers by hydraulic machinery. Meanwhile searching about the peaks disclosed gold quartz in some quantity, and many veins bearing dry ores of silver, absence of galena being characteristic. I see no reason why these peaks should not be equally productive with any district in the region.

But this is true, as I constantly insist, of all the San Juan. Everybody looks forward. Each proposes to do this and that, and to be happy—“when I sell my mine.” Perhaps this delicious uncertainty is a part of the fun. Yet many a miner would reprove me for exaggerating the uncertainty; I only hope he is right and I am wrong. That there is a vast amount of the precious metals hidden in the veins of these mountains is undeniable. It is equally true that we know where very much of it lies. But the question stands: Is it sufficiently concentrated to make the getting it out and refining it into a useful condition, yield amargin of profit on expenses? No doubt it is in many cases, but is it in the majority of so-called “mines,” or in enough to support any general population and business? Many discreet persons say “No.” Many more, naturally, will answer, “Yes.” I, myself, making no claim to utter a skilled, or a weighty, or any kind of an opinion except a carefully unbiased one, think the balance of chances is in favor of ultimate success; and I am not afraid to predict that through slow but permanent advancement this corner of Colorado will come to be one of the most important silver-producing regions on the globe.

Upon this event depends the fate of a great many enterprising investments. Faith in the success of these mines has caused the Denver and Rio Grande to build two hundred and fifty miles of railroad over mountains and wide plains which of themselves would never support the line. Faith in these mineral treasures has caused hundreds of men to follow the railway, and has set on foot little towns all along its track; and a part of the same faith is all that keeps alive the thriving town, Durango, where scores of well packed warehouses vie with one another in plethoras of merchandise, and thousands of men are exciting each other in pushing, plucky struggles after the supremacy of wealth. The miner picks away at his rock, and hopefully pays for his supplies until the last dollar is gone, and then goes at work earning more in the service of his more fortunate companion. The patronage of these men, always just on the brink of a “rich strike,” is what keeps this southern Denver—scarcely four years old yet—alive and sturdy. The precious minerals can only be procured in this region by hard and skillful labor; they are not in carbonate-beds or placer-bars, to be picked to pieces and reduced at trifling cost. On the other hand, they are richer, and while the profits are no less than in the former case, the expense of getting out is several times greater. This means the disbursement of far more money in the locality for the same amount of value received from the mines by the owners, than in an easier district to work—Leadville, for example. Thus an ore which would yield only sixty dollars to the ton will pay to work, very likely, in a carbonate camp, since it would cost only ten dollars to get it out and through the smelter; while to get the same profit on a ton of San Juan ore, it must carry one hundred dollars to the ton, say, since it requires fifty dollars to mine it. Thus for every ten dollars spent in an easy locality, five times as much must be expended here; or, in other words, five times the population maintained under the former circumstances, will be supported here, and be permanent, for fissure-veins do not produce spasmodic and uneven results, but continuous, progressive and practically inexhaustible supplies of ore for the proprietor, wages for his workman and business for the merchant, artisan and shipper. All this is the best kind of an outlook, and means that the San Juan will always be a good country for the man of moderate means, although the mining speculator may consider it too solid and tangible to suit his purposes, and therefore be loath to praise it.

Dismantled towers and turrets broken,Like grim and war-worn braves who keepA silent guard, with grief unspoken,Watch o’er the graves by the Hoven weep,The nameless graves of a race forgotten;Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are one,With the mist, long ages past begottenOf the sun.

Dismantled towers and turrets broken,

Like grim and war-worn braves who keep

A silent guard, with grief unspoken,

Watch o’er the graves by the Hoven weep,

The nameless graves of a race forgotten;

Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are one,

With the mist, long ages past begotten

Of the sun.

—Stanley Wood.

Time forbade a side excursion from Durango to the Mancos Cañon, though we were extremely anxious to make it,—Ibecause I had been there before, and the rest because they were eager to see what I had told them of.

The Rio Mancos is the next tributary of the Rio San Juan west of the Rio de la Plata. When, in 1874, I was a member of the photographic division of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey, one of the main objects of our trip was the exploration of this remote corner of the State, where we had vaguely heard of marvelous relics of a bygone civilization unequaled by anything short of the splendid ruins of Central America and the land of the Incas. After traversing the frightfully rugged trails of the San Juan and La Plata mountains, therefore, a portion of our party came out on the southern margin of the mountains, and, despite the smoldering hostility of the Indians, with which the region was filled, headed southward into the long deserted cañons. There were five of us, altogether,—Mr. W. H. Jackson (from whose skillful camera came many of the illustrations that grace my present text), the famous Captain John Moss, who went with us as “guide, philosopher and friend,” myself and two mule packers.

The trail led from Parrott City, then a nameless prospect camp, washing gold without a thought of the silver ledges to be developed later there, over to Merritt’s pleasant ranch on the upper Rio Mancos, then across rolling grass land and through groves of magnificent lumber pines, a distance of about fifteen miles. Spending one night at the ranch, sunrise the next morning found us eager to enter the portals of the cañon and the precincts of the area within which glorious discoveries in anthropology allured our imagination and made light the toil and privation of the undertaking.

ANIMAS CAÑON AND THE NEEDLES.

Not five hundred yards below the ranch we came upon our first find,—mounds of earth which had accumulated over fallen houses, and about which were strewn an abundance of fragments of pottery, variously painted in colors, often glazed within, and impressed in various designs. Later the perpendicular, buttress-like walls that hemmed in the valley began to contract, and that night we camped under some forlorn cedars, just beneath a bluff a thousand feet or so in height, which, for its upper half, was absolutely vertical. This was the edge of the green table-land, ormésa verde, which stretches over hundreds of square miles, and is cleft by these cracks or cañons, through which the drainage of the northern uplands finds its way into the Rio San Juan.

In wandering about after supper, something like a house was discerned away up on the face of this bluff, and two of us clambered over the talus of loose débris, across a great stratum of pure coal, and, by dint of much pushing and pulling, up to the ledge upon which it stood. We came down satisfied, and next morning Mr. Jackson carried up our photographic kit and got some superb negatives. There, seven hundred measured feet above the valley, perched on a little ledge only just large enough to hold it, was a two story house made of finely cut sandstone, each block about fourteen by six inches, accurately fitted and set in mortar now harder than the stone itself. The floor was the ledge upon which it rested, and the roof the overhanging rock. There were three rooms upon the ground floor, each one six by nine feet, with partition walls of faced stone. Between the stories was originally a wooden floor, traces of which still remained, as did also the cedar sticks set in the wall over the windows and door; but this was over the front room only, the height of the rocky roof behind not being sufficient to allow an attic there. Each of the stories was six feet in height, and all the rooms, upstairs and down, were nicely plastered and painted what now looks a dull brick red color, with a white band along the floor like a base-board. There was a low doorway from the ledge into the lower story, and another above, showing that the upper chamber was entered from without. The windows were square apertures, with no indication of any glazing or shutters. They commanded a view of the whole valley for many miles. Near the house several convenient little niches in the rock were built into better shape, as though they had been used as cupboards or caches; and behind it a semi-circular wall inclosing the angle of the house and cliff formed a water reservoir holding two and a half hogsheads. The water was taken out of this from a window of the upper room. In front of the house, which was the left side to one facing the bluff, an esplanade had been built to widen the narrow ledge and probably furnish a commodious place for a kitchen. The abutments which supported it were founded upon a smooth, steeply-inclined face of rock; yet so consummate was their skill in masonry that these abutments still stand, although it would seem that a pound’s weight might slide them off.

Searching further in this vicinity, we found remains of many houses on the same ledge, and some perfect ones above it quite inaccessible. The rocks also bore some inscriptions. Many edifices in the cliffs escaped our notice. The glare over everything, and the fact that the buildings, being formed of the rock on which they rested, were identical in color with it, increasing the difficulty made sufficiently great by their altitude.

Leaving here, we soon came upon traces of houses in the bottom of the valley, in the greatest profusion, nearly all of which were entirely destroyed, and broken pottery everywhere abounded. The majority of the buildings were square, but many round, and one sort of ruin always showed two square buildings with very deep cellars under them and a round tower between them, seemingly for watch and defense. In several cases a large part of this tower was still standing. The best example of this consisted of two perfectly circular walls of cut stone, one within the other. The diameter of the inner circle was twenty-two feet and of the outer thirty-three feet. The walls were thick and were perforated apparently by three equi-distant doorways. At that time we concluded this double-walled tower (later triple-walled structures of the same sort were met with) must have had a religious use; but since then I have wondered whether all of these round buildings above ground (save some which manifestly were watch towers) were not used as store-houses for snow. It was a country of long droughts and hot summers. The double or triple walls, with spaces of dead air between would make excellent refrigerators.

These groups of destroyed edifices, occupying the bottom-land, were met with all day; but no other perfect cliff-houses were found until next morning, when a little cave high up from the ground was found, which had been utilized as a homestead by being built full of low houses communicating with one another, some of which were intact, and had been appropriated by wild animals. About these dwellings were more hieroglyphics scratched on the wall, and plenty of pottery, but no implements. Further on were similar, but rather ruder, structures on a rocky bluff, but so strongly were they put together that the tooth of time had found them hard gnawing; and, in one instance, while that portion of the cliff upon which a certain house rested had cracked off and fallen away some distance without rolling, the house itself had remained solid and upright. Traces of the trails to many of these dwellings, and the steps cut in the rock, were still visible, and were useful indications of the proximity of buildings otherwise unnoticed. Yet, despite our watchfulness, Mr. Holmes’ party, which went next year to study the details of the broad prehistoric picture our rapid trip sketched out, brought to light several fine buildings, high above thevalley, in some of which valuable implements and utensils were discovered. None of them were so high, though, or in better condition than one of our prizes this second day.

Keeping close under the mesa, on the western side (you never find houses on the eastern cliff of a cañon, where the morning sun could not strike them full with its first beams) one of us espied what he thought to be a house on the face of a particularly high and smooth portion of the precipice, which there jutted out into a promontory, up one side of which it seemed we could climb to the top of the mesa above the house, whence it might be possible to crawl down to it. Fired with the hope of getting some valuable relics of household furniture in such a place, one of the gentlemen volunteered to make the attempt, and succeeded. He found it well preserved, almost semi-circular in shape, of the finest workmanship yet seen, all the stones being cut true, a foot wide, sixteen inches long and three inches thick, ground perfectly smooth on the inside so as to require no plastering. It was about six by twenty feet in interior dimensions and six feet high. The door and window were bounded by lintels, sills and caps of single flat stones. Yet all this was done, so far as we can learn, with no other tools than those made of stone, and in such a place that you might drop a pebble out of the window 500 feet plumb.

Photographs and sketches completed, we pushed on, rode twenty miles or more, and camped two miles beyond Unagua springs. There were about these springs, which are at the base of the Ute mountain, the tallest summit of the Sierra ù Late, formerly many large buildings, the relics of which are very impressive. One of them is two hundred feet square, with a wall twenty feet thick, and inclosed in the center a circular building one hundred feet in circumference. Another, near by, was one hundred feet square, with equally thick walls, and was divided north and south by a very heavy partition. This building communicated with the great stone reservoir about the springs. These heavy walls were constructed of outer strong walls of cut sandstone, regularly laid in mortar, filled in with firmly packed fragments of stone. Some portions of the wall still stand twenty or thirty feet in height, but, judging from the amount of material thrown down, the building must originally have been a very lofty one. About these large edifices were traces of smaller ones, covering half a square mile, and out in the plain another small village indicated by a collection of knolls. Scarcely anything now but white sage grows thereabouts, but there is reason to believe that in those old times it was under careful cultivation. Evidently these thick walls were the foundations of old terraced pueblos, an unusually large community having grown up about these plentiful springs, just as at Taos, San Juan, Zuñi, and the present Moqui villages in Arizona.

Our next day’s march was westerly, leaving the mesa bluffs on our right and gradually behind. The road was an interesting one, intellectually, but not at all so physically—dry, hot, dusty, long and wearisome. We passed a number of quite perfect houses, perched high up on rocky bluffs, and many other remains. One occupied the whole apex of a great conical bowlder, that ages ago had become detached from its mother mountain and rolled out into the valley. Another, worth mention, was a round tower, beautifully laid up, which surmounted an immense bowlder that had somehow rolled to the very verge of a lofty cliff overlooking the whole valley. This was a watch-tower, and we learned afterward that almost all the high points were occupied by such sentinel boxes. From it a deeply worn, devious trail led up over the edge of the mesa, by following which we should, no doubt, have found a whole town. But this was only a reconnoissance, and we could not now stop to follow out all indications.

Not far away the odd appearance of a cliff attracted my attention, and leaving the party I rode over the bare, white, rocky floors which capped all the low, broad ridges, to find a long series of shallow grottos in the escarpment filled with houses, some of which were roofed over, but most consisting simply of walls carried to the ceiling of the light, dry cavern in the sandstone, often only one or two houses occupying each of the small caves, whose openings were in the same water-worn stratum, and only a few feet or yards apart. Still more curious examples of these cave-dwellings have been seen since in the same neighborhood, and lower down. For example, on the San Juan, in 1875, Holmes and Jackson discovered, half way between top and bottom of a bluff where a stratum of shaly sandstone had been weathered and dug out to a depth of six feet, leaving a firm floor and a projecting ledge overhead, a continuous row of buildings, though none have their front walls now remaining. Doorways through each of the dividing walls afforded access along the whole line. A few rods up stream a little, niched cave-house, 14×5×6, divided into two equal compartments; a small, square window, just large enough for one to crawl through, was placed midway in the wall of each half. “We well might ask whether these little ‘cubby-holes’ had ever been used as residences, or, whether, as seems at first most likely, they might not have been ‘caches,’ or merely temporary places of refuge. While, no doubt, many of them were such, yet in the majority the evidences of use and the presence of long-continued fires, indicated by their smoke-blackened interiors, prove them to have been quite constantly occupied. Among all dwellers in mud-plastered houses, it is the practice to freshen up their habitations by repeated applications of clay, moistened to the proper consistency, and spread with the hands, the thickness of the coating depending upon its consistency. Every such application makes a building perfectly new, and many of the best sheltered cave-houses have just this appearance, as though they were but just vacated.”

The grandest of all these cave shelters, perhaps, was that in theMontezuma cañon, the main building of which was forty-eight feet long, and built of well smoothed stones. “In the rubbish of the large house,” says the report, “some small stone implements, rough, indented pottery in fragments, and a few arrow-points were found.... The whole appearance of the place and its surroundings indicates that the family or the little community who inhabited it were in good circumstances and the lords of the surrounding country. Looking out from one of their houses, with a great dome of solid rock overhead, that echoed and re-echoed every word uttered with marvelous distinctness, and below them a steep descent of one hundred feet, to the broad, fertile valley of the Rio San Juan, covered with waving fields of maize and scattered groves of majestic cottonwoods, these old people, whom even the imagination can hardly clothe with reality, must have felt a sense of security that even the incursions of their barbarous foes could hardly have disturbed.”

SILVERTON AND SULTAN MOUNTAIN.

But I cannot linger over these extremely interesting and instructive ruins, nor stop to tell of the variety and skill shown in their architecture, in their storage of water and food, in their means of defense, in their manufacture of utensils, and the art with which their life wasadorned. Out of the hundreds of leveled pueblos, cave-houses, towers, water-reservoirs and wasted fields which once bore bountiful harvests, I have only culled one here and there. I may say that not only every cañon which cuts down through the mesa to the Rio San Juan and into all of its lower tributary valleys, but many of the plateaus between, are occupied by the ruins which show an Indian occupation previous to the present savages, and of a different rank, if not of another race.

Particularly accessible to the ordinary tourist are the ruins to be seen in the Animas valley, about twenty-five miles south of Durango. These are said to consist of a pueblo three hundred and sixteen feet long by nearly one hundred wide, which evidently rose to the height of many stories. Some of the lower rooms in this great house are still standing, and skeletons and relics of great interest have been taken from them. In the center of the ruins is a subterranean, cistern-like chamber, described as about sixty feet in diameter, and plastered everywhere within with hard cement. This, probably, was the mainestufaof the village. Other lesser ruins and remains of farming operations are scattered about the vicinity, and are well worthy of exploration.

Just who and what were these aborigines (if so they were, which is very doubtful), opinions differ; but that in the Village Indians of New Mexico and Arizona we see to-day their lineal descendants, seems indisputable.

Traditions are few, that have any value, but the partial and imperfect researches which have already been made in the southwest enable us to make out dimly some strangely tragical scheme of history for this race of men whose sun set so long ago.

It is evident, for example, that the most ancient of these prehistoric ruins are those found along the immediate banks of the water-courses in the valleys. There the forerunners of the troublous times to come dwelt in peace and prosperity among their fields, which seem to have stretched over many times the area of land now possible to be cultivated. There is no question, indeed, that in those days rains were more frequent and the climate far more favorable to agriculture than at present. But how many generations—how many centuries—ago was this? And how did the change of climate, which turned the fertility of the land into desolation, come about—by slow degrees, through sudden cataclysm, or with comparatively rapid advance? Probably gradually.

But it does not seem to have been as the result of meteorological disfavor that they abandoned their populous pueblos in the pleasant valleys and began to build refuge homes in the niches of the cañon’s wall, or on the crest of inaccessible mesas. From the mountainous north came enemies they were unable to resist, and which devastated their fields and laid waste their towns, as we have seen at Ojo Caliente, and as is written in the ruins of a hundred spring-side pueblos throughout the San Juan valley. No doubt they still cultivated their fields aswell as they could between the times of attack, building temporary summer-houses and spending the idle winter in their rocky fastnesses, or retreating to them when warned of an attack. Their watch-towers on every exposed point, tell how sharp and incessant was the lookout they kept against the well-mounted and savage nomadic tribes, the prehistoric Utes and Apaches and Navajos, who were to them as the Scythians and the Vandals and Goths to the weakened empire of effeminate Rome.

But after a time a breathing space seems to have come to the harassed people, and they felt themselves safe to return to their ancient valleys and reinhabit and recultivate them. Certain houses, built upon the substratum of older fallen structures, seem to show this new era of reoccupation, which in some places lasted only a short time before enemies and drought together compelled complete abandonment, while in other more southern strongholds were founded the pueblos that still exist, at Taos, Acoma, Zuñi, and on the Moqui mesas.

When, some day, you can ride down the Mancos in a railway car and get flying glimpses of the ruined houses—if your eyes are sharp to see and your mind quick to apprehend,—do not forget how populous was this dry and garish valley during those bygone days, when the Crusaders were waking up Europe, and all that was known of America was that the Basque fishermen went to the fog-banks of an icy western coast to catch codfish. I am more sure of your interest here, though, than in many other far-paraded precincts of this marvelous realm, I am taking you so swiftly through in my pilgrimage on wheels. And I cannot enforce my point better,—leave an impression more lasting and graceful on your minds of those gentle shepherds and husbandmen (but no less brave warriors), who were here so long before us, than by giving you the poem my clever-brained and genial friend has written in Swinburnian measure about them:

“In the sad South-west, in the mystical Sunland,Far from the toil, and the turmoil of gain;Hid in the heart of the only—the one landBeloved of the Sun, and bereft of the rain;The one weird land where the wild winds blowing,Sweep with a wail o’er the plains of the dead,A ruin, ancient beyond all knowing,Rears its head“On the cañon’s side, in the ample hollow,That the keen winds carved in ages past,The Castle walls, like the nest of a swallowHave clung and have crumbled to this at last.The ages since man’s foot has restedWithin these walls, no man may know;For here the fierce grey eagle nestedLong ago.“Above those walls the crags lean over,Below, they dip to the river’s bed;Between, fierce wingéd creatures hover,Beyond, the plain’s wild waste is spread.No foot has climbed the pathway dizzy,That crawls away from the blasted heath,Since last it felt the ever busyFoot of Death.“In that haunted Castle—it must be haunted,For men have lived here, and men have died,And maidens loved, and lovers daunted,Have hoped and feared, have laughed and sighed—In that haunted Castle the dust has drifted,But the eagles only may hope to seeWhat shattered Shrines and what Altars rifted,There may be.“The white, bright rays of the sunbeam sought it,The cold, clear light of the moon fell here,The west wind sighed, and the south wind brought it,Songs of Summer year after year.Runes of Summer, but mute and runeless,The Castle stood; no voice was heard,Save the harsh, discordant, wild and tunelessCry of bird.“The spring rains poured, and the torrent riftedA deeper way;—the foam-flakes fell,Held for a moment poised and lifted,Down to a fiercer whirlpool’s hell.On the Castle tower no guard, in wonder,Paused in his marching to and fro,For on the turret the mighty thunderFound no foe.“No voice of Spring,—no Summer gloriesMay wake the warders from their sleep,Their graves are made by the sad Dolores,And the barren headlands of Hoven-weep.Their graves are nameless—Their race forgotten,Their deeds, their words, their fate, are oneWith the mist, long ages past begotten,Of the Sun.“Those castled cliffs they made their dwelling,They lived and loved, they fought and fell,No faint, far voice comes to us tellingMore than those crumbling walls can tell.They lived their life, their fate fulfilling,Then drew their last faint, faltering breath,Their hearts, congealed, clutched by the chillingHand of Death.“Dismantled towers, and turrets broken,Like grim and war-worn braves who keepA silent guard, with grief unspoken,Watch o’er the graves by the Hoven-weep.The nameless graves of a race forgotten;Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are oneWith the mist, long ages past begotten,Of the Sun.”

“In the sad South-west, in the mystical Sunland,

Far from the toil, and the turmoil of gain;

Hid in the heart of the only—the one land

Beloved of the Sun, and bereft of the rain;

The one weird land where the wild winds blowing,

Sweep with a wail o’er the plains of the dead,

A ruin, ancient beyond all knowing,

Rears its head

“On the cañon’s side, in the ample hollow,That the keen winds carved in ages past,The Castle walls, like the nest of a swallowHave clung and have crumbled to this at last.The ages since man’s foot has restedWithin these walls, no man may know;For here the fierce grey eagle nestedLong ago.

“On the cañon’s side, in the ample hollow,

That the keen winds carved in ages past,

The Castle walls, like the nest of a swallow

Have clung and have crumbled to this at last.

The ages since man’s foot has rested

Within these walls, no man may know;

For here the fierce grey eagle nested

Long ago.

“Above those walls the crags lean over,Below, they dip to the river’s bed;Between, fierce wingéd creatures hover,Beyond, the plain’s wild waste is spread.No foot has climbed the pathway dizzy,That crawls away from the blasted heath,Since last it felt the ever busyFoot of Death.

“Above those walls the crags lean over,

Below, they dip to the river’s bed;

Between, fierce wingéd creatures hover,

Beyond, the plain’s wild waste is spread.

No foot has climbed the pathway dizzy,

That crawls away from the blasted heath,

Since last it felt the ever busy

Foot of Death.

“In that haunted Castle—it must be haunted,For men have lived here, and men have died,And maidens loved, and lovers daunted,Have hoped and feared, have laughed and sighed—In that haunted Castle the dust has drifted,But the eagles only may hope to seeWhat shattered Shrines and what Altars rifted,There may be.

“In that haunted Castle—it must be haunted,

For men have lived here, and men have died,

And maidens loved, and lovers daunted,

Have hoped and feared, have laughed and sighed—

In that haunted Castle the dust has drifted,

But the eagles only may hope to see

What shattered Shrines and what Altars rifted,

There may be.

“The white, bright rays of the sunbeam sought it,The cold, clear light of the moon fell here,The west wind sighed, and the south wind brought it,Songs of Summer year after year.Runes of Summer, but mute and runeless,The Castle stood; no voice was heard,Save the harsh, discordant, wild and tunelessCry of bird.

“The white, bright rays of the sunbeam sought it,

The cold, clear light of the moon fell here,

The west wind sighed, and the south wind brought it,

Songs of Summer year after year.

Runes of Summer, but mute and runeless,

The Castle stood; no voice was heard,

Save the harsh, discordant, wild and tuneless

Cry of bird.

“The spring rains poured, and the torrent riftedA deeper way;—the foam-flakes fell,Held for a moment poised and lifted,Down to a fiercer whirlpool’s hell.On the Castle tower no guard, in wonder,Paused in his marching to and fro,For on the turret the mighty thunderFound no foe.

“The spring rains poured, and the torrent rifted

A deeper way;—the foam-flakes fell,

Held for a moment poised and lifted,

Down to a fiercer whirlpool’s hell.

On the Castle tower no guard, in wonder,

Paused in his marching to and fro,

For on the turret the mighty thunder

Found no foe.

“No voice of Spring,—no Summer gloriesMay wake the warders from their sleep,Their graves are made by the sad Dolores,And the barren headlands of Hoven-weep.Their graves are nameless—Their race forgotten,Their deeds, their words, their fate, are oneWith the mist, long ages past begotten,Of the Sun.

“No voice of Spring,—no Summer glories

May wake the warders from their sleep,

Their graves are made by the sad Dolores,

And the barren headlands of Hoven-weep.

Their graves are nameless—Their race forgotten,

Their deeds, their words, their fate, are one

With the mist, long ages past begotten,

Of the Sun.

“Those castled cliffs they made their dwelling,They lived and loved, they fought and fell,No faint, far voice comes to us tellingMore than those crumbling walls can tell.They lived their life, their fate fulfilling,Then drew their last faint, faltering breath,Their hearts, congealed, clutched by the chillingHand of Death.

“Those castled cliffs they made their dwelling,

They lived and loved, they fought and fell,

No faint, far voice comes to us telling

More than those crumbling walls can tell.

They lived their life, their fate fulfilling,

Then drew their last faint, faltering breath,

Their hearts, congealed, clutched by the chilling

Hand of Death.

“Dismantled towers, and turrets broken,Like grim and war-worn braves who keepA silent guard, with grief unspoken,Watch o’er the graves by the Hoven-weep.The nameless graves of a race forgotten;Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are oneWith the mist, long ages past begotten,Of the Sun.”

“Dismantled towers, and turrets broken,

Like grim and war-worn braves who keep

A silent guard, with grief unspoken,

Watch o’er the graves by the Hoven-weep.

The nameless graves of a race forgotten;

Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are one

With the mist, long ages past begotten,

Of the Sun.”

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful and after that out of all whooping.

—Merchant of Veniceiii, 2.

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