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Show 40 distance above, plenty of water was found in the bed of the creek; fine large cotton woods bordered the stream, and the broad fertile valley seemed a far more desirable place of residence than the forbidding desolation of the Ubelly. About thirty miles from the San Juan we left Epsom Creek, and stopped for a night at the head of the canons which run between it and the Montezuma. We were in the midst of quite a thickly- settled, ancient population, the ruins of their habitations consisting almost entirely of the kind just described- low, rectangular mopnds, so completely destroyed as not to leave one stone upon another, yet accompanied always by an abundance of the same kind of pottery we have found so universally distributed over other localities. Not the slightest difference can be detected in its general quality, nor can anyone style of manufacture or ornamentation be said to be peculiar to any one district or group of ancient habitations. It is the same with arrow- points and like work, and with the similarities in building; although covering two different periods of their existence, it carries the convictiou to us that they were all one and the same people, scattered* in families and communities throughout the valleys and canons. After leaving this last group of ruins, all traces of them suddenly ceased, and in the four or five days spent in the examination of the country upon the southern, eastern, and northern flanks of the Sierra Abajo, not a single vestige was found ; and this in without exception, the most pleasant spot we have touched since leaving La Plata. Clear and cold mountain- streams ripple dowu through ravines overhung by groves of willow, maple, and quaking- asp, with splendid oaks and stately pines scattered over the uplands, and an abundance of rich, nutritious grass everywhere, that our poor, half- starved animals knew well how to appreciate. The black tail deer and gronse were in goodly numbers, starting up from under our very noses, and leading our hunters many a long chase. Leaving half of our little party of six, and all the animals but those we rode and the trusty Mex. with the apparatus, we made our way down through the deep and narrow canons that lead from the plateau country into the great basin that lies between the Sierra Abajo and the Sierra La Sal, and spent two days in the examination of its arid surface, covered with monumental rocks and ridges, but without coming across so much as a piece of pottery or an arrow- point. Turning our backs upon the Abajo Peaks, we struck out northeasterly over the plateau, but soon finding a trail bearing southeast, followed it until we saw that it was likely to continue some time upon the plateau, when we branched off to the left, and in a short distance came upon the very brink of the deep canon of the Montezuma, one of the far- reaching arms of the main wash and valley farther east. Winding our way among rocks and scrubby piiions, we almost literally tumbled down tbe precipitous descent of 1,500 feet, to a narrow bottom, walled in first by a broad belt of massive white sandstone, rising almost perpendicularly from 20 to 50 feet above the valley; above that the dark red and shaly sand- nocks rose up iu receding benches 1,000 feet to a broad tablet of white sandstone on top, so high up that it seemed to shut out all the world and to leave us as engulfed in the bosom of the earth. A narrow but deep '' wash" meandered from side to side, containing just a few scattered pools of stagnant water, while dense thickets of oak brush, thickly interwoven with vines, rendered progress anything but pleasant. We had gone but a few rods before we commenced picking up pieces of pottery and meeting other evidences of occupation; within three |