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Show 258 WESTERN WILDS. hundred feet farther out than the ledge on which the houses stood. As near as I could judge at the distance, the ledge was fifty feet wide, and the houses some twenty feet square. Evidently the " Aztecs" who boarded there did not go to bed by means of a rope-ladder. My guide was now all life and animation, shouting and calling my attention to every thing of note on the cliffs as we walked our horses slowly down the sandy stream. He seemed to take as much interest in the ettah- hoganday as I did. An hour more brought us to a better object of study : the ruins of a considerable village were on the bottom of the canon, by the foot of the cliff, and about a hundred feet straight above them, ten or a dozen houses in perfect preservation, standing all together on a ledge a hundred feet wide, and completely inaccessible. Above the village the cliff was perpendicular for a hundred feet or more, then gradually swelled outwardly till it ex-tended considerably over the houses, leaving them thus actually in a great crevice in the rock. Here was a wonder. My Navajo ran about with the activity of a cat, and in several places managed to climb up twenty feet or so, then the smooth Avail cut off further prog-ress. Hunting along the rock he found and called my attention to some holes looking like steps cut into the stone, which seemed to lead up to a point where one of the peculiar stone slabs I have de-scribed leaned against the cliff. The opposite side of the canon was accessible, and not more than two hundred yards distant, so we went over there and climbed to a point somewhat higher than the pueblo. I then saw that the ledge or groove in the rock, in which the pueblo was built, ran along the cliff for a quarter of a mile, some distance beyond where we found the stone steps; and thought I saw indications of steps, leading down from it a little way toward* the detached - slab. Possibly, I thought, this slab may have been fast above when the vil-lage had inhabitants, and furnished them a winding stairway. I saw, also, that the houses were of a most admirable construction, built of flat stones laid in mortar, and neatly . whitewashed inside; and that the joists were of massive timber, round, nearly a foot thick, and dressed with some care. At the distance of seven or eight hundred feet there was much uncertainty, but I fancied I also saw fragments of iron and leather on the floor of one house the only one into which the sun-shine fell directly. From the situation of the cliffs, I judge that about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun would be shining directly in the front doors. A remarkable echo is observable here. A sentence of ten words |