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Show 31 In the face of the bluff immediately under this ruin, and upon a recessed bench situated about half- way between top and bottom, is a row of little " rock shelters. 7' A stratum of a rotten shaly sandstone has been weathered or dug out, probably both, for a distance of 300 feet along the bluff, to a depth of about six feet, leaving a firm floor and a projecting ledge overhead, with just room enough to walkaloug without stooping. A continuous row of buildings occupied this bench, although most of them have tumbled into the river, and none have their front vails remaining. Door- ways through each of the dividing walls afforded access along the whole line. A few rods up stream, and in the same line of the bluff as the preceding, was another little niched cave-house, ( figure 3, Plate 18,) 14 feet in length, 5 feet high at the center and 6deep, divided into two equal apartments; a small square window, just large enough for one to crawl through, was placed midway in the wall of each half. We well might ask whether these little " cubby- holes " had ever been used as residences, or whether, as seems at first most likely, they might not simply be " caches," or merely temporary places of refuge, and while, no doubt, many of them are such, yet in the greater majority the evidences of use and the presence of long- continued fires, indicated by their smoke- blackened interiors, would prove them to have been quite constantly occupied. Among all dwellers in mud- plastered houses it is the practice to freshen up their habitations by repeated applications of clay, moistened to the proper consistency, and spread with the iaml8, the thickness of the coating depending upon its consistency. Every such application makes a building appear perfectly new, and many of the best- sheltered cave- houses have just this appearance, as though they were but just vacated. A quarter of a mile back over the flat level bench, is a long narrow hill about 100 feet in height, commanding an extended view up and down the valley, upon the summit of which is one of the circular, mound- like i& closures which occur so frequently upon both the highlands and the lowlands. It evidently has some connection with the group below on the river's edge, for there are no other ruins within several miles. Continuing down the river, under the great bluffs which border it closely, we find many ruins of the " rock- shelter" kind occurring frequently in all sorts of positions, from the level of the valley to a height of over 100 feet, and from the smallest kind of a " cache," not larger than a bushel- basket, to buildings that sheltered several families. We illustrate one group in figure 4, of Plate 18, that consists of a row of three small bouses built upon a ledge running horizontally along the perpendicular face of the bluff, about 60 feet above the trail immediately below it The ledge was so narrow that the buildings occupied Gvery available inch of its surface. As near as we could judge from below, . each was about 5 feet wide and 10 long, with apertures through their end walls, and in the two first ones windows in the outer wall. No possible means of access were discernible, and if ladders were ever used they were taller than any of the trees available for the purpose that grow in this-vicinity. About twelve miles below the Montezuma we discovered, far away upon the opposite side of the river, a great circular cave, occupying very nearly the entire height of the bluff in which it occurred, and in * hicb, by close inspection with the glass, we were enabled to make out a long line of masonry. Fording the river and approaching it we found that the bluff- line at this place was a little over 200 feet in height, the upper half a light- colored, firm, massive sandstone, and the lower a dark led and shaly variety. The opening of the cave is almost perfectly cb> |
