OCR Text |
Show WILD LIFE IN AKIZONA. 259 shouted from the south side, is returned clearly and distinctly. Not far below we found the ruins of another house, not more than forty feet high, with shelving rock below. The Navajo found steps to lead half way up. He then walked along a flat offset five or six feet be-flow the house, and held his hands against my feet while I climbed a shelving rock and reached it. It was in ruins, and most of the ma-terial lay in a heap in the cafion below. Only the fire- place and chimney, built against the cliff, remained whole ; they were of the common Pueblo pattern, and showed dabs of whitewash. I sustained one serious disappointment. Through some blunder of my guide or the interpreter who instructed him at Defiance, I missed the greatest wonder. We ought to have turned up the Cafion de Chelley from where we entered it, and a mile or two would have brought us to the largest pueblo, one capable of containing a thousand people, situated on a cliff fifteen hundred feet high and utterly inaccessible. And who once inhabited these towns? Well, I am of opinion the people were substantially of the same race as the present Pueblos. The houses are an exact reproduction of those at Pueblo de Laguna, including stone, mortar, towers, acquarra windows, and whitewashed interior. From the lower valleys they retreated to these cliffs where their mounted enemies could not pursue them. But the streams on which they depended are dried up, and the little nooks they once cul-tivated are fast being buried by the drifting sand. The disintegrating cliffs are spreading barrenness over all the valleys; the cafion bed is like a vast river of sand. As we journey down it a feeble stream sometimes shows itself for a few rods, and is then lost; again our animals' hoofs turn up moist sand. Occasionally bright meadows of green grass appear; and again the sand river seems to divide and flow around a fertile island a little higher than the main land, and con-taining a few acres of dense wheat- grass, as high as a man's head. Again we find the cliffs sinking from a perpendicular to a slope of sixty degrees or so, and bordered by considerable foot- hills; and there we see shrubby hemlock, bunch- grass, a few herds and Navajo ho-gans. Above are their goats clambering up what appears the bare, yellow face of stone ; but riding near we observe hundreds of little gullies worn in the rock, each with a slight stain of soil and a few bunches of yellow grass. Looking for camp early, we came upon a green island " of some ten acres, containing three Navajo huts; my guide shouted to the first shepherd girl he saw, who pointed to a peak half a mile away, exclaiming, " Klohh, tokh!" We rode thither, and to my surprise found that the cliffs gave back and inclosed a level |