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Show 240 WESTERN WILDS. ing flocks among the hills ; the women asleep, or sitting on the dirt floor smoking cigarettes of corn- shuck and tobacco, and the whole juvenile population looked like a miserable batch of rags, sore eyes and sin. There was not a tree, a flower, or a spear of grass in the place. Those persons I spoke to were even too lazy to understand Spanish as I spoke it, anyhow. They only grunted, " No sabe," and, pointing to a rather superior adobe on the hill, remarked, '' Alii, un Americano." I found him an " American" indeed. His name was Ryan, and he was " from Tipper- ra- r- ry, be dad ! " Years ago he drifted here, liked it, married a Mexican woman, had several Pueblo servants and a flock of sheep, and was general adviser, advocate and scribe for the settle-ment. A delegation of Pueblos from the next town were at his house to complain of the Navajoes, who had been stealing their stock. He took me to the public fonda, where I got a good supper of goat's milk, tortillas and eggs, and a clean room, and spent the evening quite pleasantly. The nights there are delightful ; a little too cool towards morning, perhaps, for comfortable sleeping in the open air, but with abundant blankets we did well. The entire mountain range southwest is said to be a mass of minerals coal, iron and copper. It is a region of curiosities. In the next valley south is the largest one of the aban-doned cities of whom? Quien sabe, is the universal answer of Mexi-can and Indian. Most of the houses there are of sawed stone. Three miles ahead, and on our road, is the noted Pueblo de Laguna (" Town of the Lake"), probably the best built of all the Montezumas towns, and so called because in former times the Pueblos built a vast cause-way across the upper end of the valley, to retain the winter floods from the mountain for summer irrigation. Now the dam is broken down, the lake is dry, the cultivable land reduced to a few acres, and the pueblo slowly dying. Starting next morning at the first flush of daylight, and climbing a rocky trail for three miles, while the team made a circuit of seven, I gained two hours for a visit to this place. The sun was just rising as I entered the pueblo, and the inhabitants were mostly on the house-tops preparing their implements for the day's work. The town is situated, upon the east end of an oval rock or mole, some two miles long, and rising gradually at each end to a height of a hundred feet above the bordering plain. The top is comparatively level, and the sides fall off in a succession of abrupt benches, each a yard or so in width and height, rendering the whole place a splendid natural fortifi-cation. On these rocks the Pueblos first built for protection, and are |
