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Show 246 WESTERN WILDS. forty years. During my stay they enjoyed the only heavy rain for three years. Gypsum, salt and iron are abundant. A short distance west of the fort is a whole mountain of gypsum, so to speak enough to bury an eastern county. Neither gold nor silver has been found in paying quantities. Precious stones of various kinds have been found near, particularly garnets and turquoises. Lieutenant H. R. Brinkerhoff has a large collection of curious stones, picked up within a mile or two of the fort. Magnetic stones, the size of one's fist, can be had by the bushel. Some of them, when thrown loosely upon the ground, will roll over towards each other till they gather in a group. All the hills are covered with timber, and in the larger canons is abundance of pine fit for lumber. The mountains north and east present the ap-pearance of a succession of lofty cones, Avith here and there an oval hill. In many adjacent valleys are ruins of towns, and acecquias, where no water now runs at any season. Thirty miles south- west is a valley strewn with ruins, indicating a large settlement; it is now a desert. Wingate is the center of a region of curiosities. Among our visit-ors were some Zuni Indians from the great pueblo forty miles west. This is an enormous building of five terraced stories, containing eight hundred semi- civilized Indians. In this great human hive are carried on all the complicated affairs of a community life : government, manu-factures, art, and religious rites. They cultivate their little patches with great skill, producing abundance of corn, wheat, beans, and melons; their mercantile wealth is in sheep, goats, blankets, beads, and pottery. They are severely chaste, any departure from virtue being rigidly punished. They once had the art of writing, and still preserve one book ; but the last man who could read it died many years ago, and the priests regard it merely as a holy relic. It consists simply of a mass of finely dressed skins, bound on one side with thongs; the leaves are thickly covered with characters and drawings in red, blue, and green squares, diamonds, circles, serpents, eagles, plants, flying monsters and hideous human heads. One of their caciques says it is the history of their race, and shows that they have moved fourteen times, this being their fifteenth place of settlement. No Spanish priest has ever been permitted to enter their town ; their religion appears to be a mixture of Spiritism and Sabianism. They are quite domestic in their tastes, and fond of pets. Turkeys and tame eagles abound among them, living about the terraces of the pueblo, and even in their dwellings. They are keen traders, and have |