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Show 84 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY ting; cotton cloth, mats and baskets of osiers; sandals of yucca leaves and cords of yucca fibres; pottery of various types; numerous objects of stone, bone, and wood; also corn, both shelled and on the cob, and beans. The wooden articles and textile fabrics were remarkably well preserved. 1 In addition to the cliff dwellings, which are merely stone houses built on protected ledges, cave dwellings and artificial cavate abodes are also found. X^ These occur chiefly on the west side of the Rio Grande, between Santa Clara and Cochiti, and in the upper San Juan y alley. In some cases these seem to have been cut out of the solid rock, usually a soft volcanic tufa or shale. 1 On the plateaus and in the valleys of the southwest ruins of stone buildings are quite common as far west as the one hundred and thirteenth meridian; . those which have been most thoroughly examined are chiefly in the drainage area of the San Juan River. Many of these structures have probably been inhabited within historic times; others were doubtless in ruins when the Spaniards first arrived. Some of the largest and most remarkable are situated in the Chaco Canon; one of these, known as Pueblo Bonito, is roughly semicircular in 1 Nordenskiold, The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde; Birdsall, " The Cliff Dwellings of the Canons of the Mesa Verde" ( Am. Geog. Soc., Bulletin, XXIII., 584- 620). 1 Holmes, Report on the Ancient Ruins of Southwestern Colorado, Examined in 1875 and 1876; U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey of the Territories, Tenth Report, 388. |