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Show EXPLORING IN THE CANYON OF DEATH 299 Photograph by Earl H. Mc PACKING DAY IN CAMP During the bothersome task of adjusting mummies, pots, and baskets inside a limited number of crates, Mrs. Morris, Tatman, and Owens were almost envious of the mummies seated in the foreground. for a brief moment had broken through the dark clouds masking the November sky. DUST A MENACE TO LIFE The preceding paragraphs record merely the most striking events during our explorations in Canon del Muerto. Nothing has been said of days of tedium; of barren trenching, of measuring, of photographing; nor of the dust, which is a menace both to life and comfort. The least disturbance of the earth in these caves, where there has not been a drop of moisture for millenniums, stirs up a gray cloud so dense that sometimes one cannot discern even the outline of an assistant a shovel's length away (see page 294). To work in such places, one must breathe through several thicknesses of moist cloth or face the consequence, which is a violent chill with a tendency to develop into pneumonia. Nor have I mentioned the months of careful study which will be necessary before the thousands of specimens will have told the last detail of their story. That story will reveal the cultural historj of the aborigines of the Southwest previous to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Already the chapter heads have been translated and a brief of the pages written, but it will be many a year before the last paragraph is filled in. Probably the exact date of the first human inhabitation of the Southwest will never be known, but by a conservative estimate it was all of 4,000 years ago. The first settlers of whom a trace has been discovered were an extremely longheaded people of medium stature. They were undergoing transition from nomadic to sedentary existence under the compelling influence of the cultivation of maize. This cereal, together with the few wild fruits and seeds which the barren environment afforded, augmented, of course, by the none too plentiful game supply, provided them with food. Although their tools were of few types, and made exclusively of stone, bone, and wood, they were skilled artisans in several lines. They were past masters in weaving |