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Show 39 present semi civilized people known as the Moquis, but return to the mouth of Epsom Creek and describe the many curious remains fouud north of the San Juan, all of which bear some relationship to those of the Hovenweep already noticed. | Fifteen miles up Epsom Creek a side caiiou comes in from the left, I down which trickles a scanty stream of brackish water with the pecu- , liarity of taste and action wiich has given the name to the whole valley. Camping here, we extended our observations up this lateral carton I some 8 or 10 miles in quest of ruins, and found them numerous enough to satisfy our most earifest desire, although not of the importance of the greater ones of the San Juan and De Chelly. All were of the small cave kind, mostly mere " cubby- holes," but so smoke- blackened inside and showing other marks of use as to convince us they had been long occupied but not during any comparatively recent period. In the generality of eases they were on small benches or iu shallow caves situated near the bed of the 81ream, but the farther up we went the higher they were built. In one instance a bluff several hundred feet in height contains half a dozen small houses sandwiched in its various strata, the highest being up 150 feet, each of but one room, and one of them a perfect J specimen of adobe- plastered masonry, hardly a crack appearing upon K. s smoothly- stuccoed surface. A short distance up from the entrance to the canon a square tower ( Fig. 2, Plate 18) has been built upon a commanding point of the mesa, and iu a position, so far as any means at our command are concerned, perfectly inaccessible. The stones of which it is composed are of a very nearly uniform size, more so than in iny of the buildings we have seen west of the Hovenweep. | Upon the opposite side of the main Epsom Creek Valley, and on top of the high bluffs of sandstone which border it for nearly its whole length, we found some cave- houses in a most singularly out- of- the- way place- in the very last place in the world where one would expect to find them. Scaling the bluff at the very imminent risk of our necks, j became suddenly upon a broad open cave, near the top, containing the | fliual style of stone- built aud mud- plastered houses, divided into four or live apartments, of just the size aud number that would be required by an ordinary family of eight or ten persons. Farther up, on top of ; the bluff, we found the remains of a circular tower 40 feet in diameter, I am] very old, the stones all crumbled, rounded, and moss- covered. Near by were remains of two other cave- habitations. j A few miles farther up the Epsom Valley, passing a number of old • niius hardly worthy of mentiou, we came upon an important group that I was evidently the center of the surrounding population- a place of wor- I ship or of general congregation- an aboriginal shire- town. It lay upon both sides of a small, dry ravine, some 20 or 30 rods back ; from the bed of the creek, and consisted of a main rectangular mass, 60 1 by 100 feet square, occupying quite an elevation, dominating all the | others. Just below it, and close upon the edge of the ravine, was a iwund tower 25 feet in diameter; and 75 feet below that, and also close to the ravine, was a square building 20 feet across, nearly obscured by a thicket of piilon- trees growing about it. On the opposite bank were tvo small round towers, each 15 feet in diameter, with two oblong structures between, 12 by 15 feet square; at right angles to these four, which * ere arrauged in a straight line, another square building occurred, the same size as the one just opposite on the other bauk. Portions of the * alls of the towers remained, and a few courses of stone iu the walls of ! fbe smaller square buildings, but in the large ruin the walls were merely 1 indicated by great mounds of crumbling rock, with the subdivisions distinctly marked however, Into four rectangular apartment*. A short |
