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Show A NOTICE OF THE ANCIENT RUINS IN ARIZONA AND UTAH LYING ABOUT THE RIO SAN JUAN. Br W. H. JACKSON. In continuing the investigation, commenced last season, of the very interesting ruins scattered throughout the San Juan basin, I proceeded to Parrott City, a frontier mining- camp on La Plata River, where I pro-cared the services of Harry Lee as guide and interpreter. Mr. E. A. Barber, naturalist and special correspondent of the New York Herald, * as also of the party. Providing ourselves with the supplies which had been forwarded to this point via Tierr$ Aniarilla, we started out late in July, journeying westwardly to that point on the Hovenweep from which we had turned back last year, and where we shall also rename our explorations. The Hovenweep ( a deserted valley) is a tributary of the McElmo, which, together with the wide- spreading arms of the Montezuma, drain into the San Juan all that portion of the country lying between the Mesa Verde and the Sierra Abajo, covering in the aggregate some two-thousand five hundred square miles. Their labyrinthine cafions head dose upon the Dolores on the north, and ramify the plateaus in every direction with an interminable series of deep, desolate gorges, and wide, barren valleys. There is not a living stream throughout this whole region. During the summer months water occurs in but very few places, generally in pockets, sometimes in springs, where the excess, if any, is-soon swallowed by the hot and thirsty sands. The rainy season is in winter and the early spring months, when the water is more generously distributed, being then found in the many basins scattered over the bare tops of the ingsas, as well as in the beds of the canons, the lower temperature of the colder season preventing the rapid evaporation of summer and autumn weather. As a great proportion of the surface of this region is a bare bed of rock, with a soil in the lowlands nearly imperious to moisture, the winter showers soon gather their waters together in great floods in the main channels, and then, rushing down in a solid body, form those deep " washes " so characteristic of the country. But these torrents are short- lived, and it is only by noting the height of the drift- material lodged upou the trunks of the venerable cotton woods ; bordering the banks that we can fully realize such great bodies of water erer having existed in so dusty a bed. Every caiiou and valley has its-corresponding wash, worn perpendicularly down through the dry, easily-eroded soil, forming circuitous but excellent pathways. In some valleysr where the drainage is considerable, these washes frequently attaiu a depth of from 30 to 40 feet, and are impassable for miles. The intervening table- lands obtain a very nearly uniform height of 500 feet, running up to over 1,000 feet as we approach the Dolorei divide. In the wider valleys the maximum is reached by snccessive steps, or benches, risiug one back of the other, while in the narrow |
