THE RUINS OF THE COLORADO VALLEY.
HOUSE OF A MOQUI CHIEF.
It was about seventy years before our English race gained a foothold on the eastern coast of America that, far away in the West, the seeds of another form of Eastern civilization began to fall upon ground which now belongs to our national territory. In the wilderness near the western border of New Mexico there stands a great crag, torn into curious shapes by the wear of ages, bearing on its summit a ruined fortress of a forgotten people and on its side hieroglyphic writing which no one can decipher. The same smooth sandstone surface which invited the picture-writing of the ancients has also tempted later passers-by to perpetuate their names. A long series of inscriptions in Spanish, begun before the first English had landed at Jamestown, tells how explorers, conquerors, government emissaries and missionaries of the Cross, passing that way, paused to leave their names on the enduring rock. That imperishable monument bears record to all time that this remotest region of our country, the last which the new life of the nineteenth century penetrates, was the first point to be touched by European civilization, if we except one old Florida fort. It is three hundred and forty years since the Spaniards entered New Mexico. There, almost at the centre of the continent, in the valleys of the Rio Grande and Colorado, the old Spanish life has remained, as unprogressive as a Chinese province, continuing to the middle of this century a kind of modified feudal system. But this old declining civilization of the South-west is new in comparison with that which the Spanish conquerors found existing in the country when they entered it. A remnant of that old half-civilized life lingers still, almost unchanged by contact with white men, in the seven citadels of the Moquis perched on the high mesas of Arizona, while in the Pueblo villages of New Mexico we find it more affected by the Spanish influence.
The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days' journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population, lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi. To the grief of the invaders, they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization. They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton and produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found them declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane.
In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people. On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their villages—rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large circular estufas, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the cañons are scattered in every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which give us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten people. And on commanding points, seen far away down the cañons or across the mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might signal to the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians.
It is only a few years since Mr. John Ruskin rejected a suggestion that he should visit the United States, urging among other reasons that it would be impossible for him to exist even for a short time in a country where there are no old castles. We Americans were disposed to resent this slap at our country, and not a few newspaper editors relieved their minds by intimating that we could get along quite comfortably without old castles and without Mr. Ruskin. But, after all, it is a consolation for our national pride to know that the fault is not in our country, but in Mr. Ruskin's ignorance of American archæology. We have old castles without number in the Western Territories—ruined fortifications and dwellings of an unknown antiquity, perhaps as old as Warwick or Bangor, as impregnable as the highest cliff-built castle of the Rhine, as grand in situation as the Drachenfels or Dover Castle.
Only the more eastern part of the great domain held by that ancient people has yet been examined thoroughly with reference to its antiquities. Within the last decade Mr. W H. Jackson of the United States Geological Survey has brought to notice, by his admirable photographs and descriptions, the remains in the cliffs and cañons of South-western Colorado and the adjacent region. Thirty years ago Lieutenant Simpson described the ruined pueblos of New Mexico. But in regard to the ruins farther west, seen by Major Powell in his headlong course down the Colorado River, and the innumerable remains of cities, fortresses and canals mentioned by visitors to Arizona, but little careful investigation has been made. I believe that few richer fields for an antiquary can be found in the world than this south-western region of our own country. I cannot doubt that a thorough comparative examination of these remains would throw a new light upon the relationship between the ancient and modern civilized tribes, and upon their connection with their far more civilized Aztec neighbors of the South. As yet, hardly an attempt at excavation has been made in the Colorado Valley.
GUALPI.
There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so great a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the cañon of the Little Rio Mancos[1] in South-western Colorado. The stream rises in a spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp called Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open valley, it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound cañon which cuts for nearly thirty miles through a tableland called the Mesa Verde. The cañon is wide enough to permit the old inhabitants to plant their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either side to a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and grooved and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata and the projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities for building fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence. Therefore the whole length of the cañon is filled with ruins, and for fifteen miles beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the river meets the Rio San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the ancient occupation. The scenery of the cañon is wild and imposing in the highest degree. In the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or weather-stains to dull the brightness of the strata to the universal hoariness of moister climates: the vertical cliffs, standing above long slopes of débris, are colored with the brilliant tints of freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of green follows the course of the rivulet winding down through the cañon till it is lost to sight in the vista of crags. The utter silence and solitude of the wilderness reigns through the valley. It is not occupied by any savage tribe, and only a few white men within the last few years have passed through it and told of its wonders; and yet its whole length is but one series of houses and temples that were forsaken centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a more exciting tour of exploration than that which Mr. Jackson's party made on first entering this cañon in 1874.
Above the entrance of the cañon the evidences of pre-historic life begin. On the bottom-land, concealed by shrubbery, are the half-obliterated outlines of square and circular buildings. The houses were of large size, and were plainly no temporary dwelling-places, for an accumulation of decorated pottery fills the ground about them, indicating long occupation. No doubt they were built of adobe—masses of hard clay dried in the sun—which the wear of ages has reduced to smoothly-rounded mounds. For some miles down the cañon remains of this sort occur at short intervals, and at one point there stands a wall built of squared sandstone blocks. Along the ledges of the cliffs on the right bits of ruinous masonry are detected here and there, but for a time there is nothing to excite close attention. At last a watchful eye is arrested by a more interesting object perched at a tremendous height on the western wall of the cañon. It is a house built upon a shelf of rock between the precipices, but, standing seven hundred feet above the stream and differing not at all in color from the crags about it, only the sharpest eyesight can detect the unusual form of the building and the windows marking the two stories. The climb up to the house-platform is slow and fatiguing, but the trouble is repaid by a sight of one of the most curious ruins on this continent. Before the door of the house, part of the ledge has been reserved for a little esplanade, and to make it broader three small abutments of stone, which once supported a floor, are built on the sloping edge of the rock. Beyond this the house is entered by a small aperture which served as a door. It is the best specimen of a Cliff-dweller's house that remains to our time. The walls are admirably built of squared stones laid in a hard white mortar. The house is divided into two stories of three rooms each. Behind it a semicircular cistern nearly as high as the house is built against the side of it, and a ladder is arranged for descending from an upper window to the water-level. The floor of the second story was supported by substantial cedar timbers, but only fragments of them remain. The roof, too, has entirely disappeared, but the canopy of natural rock overhanging serves to keep out the weather. The front rooms in both stories are the largest and are most carefully finished. Perhaps they were the parlor and "best bedroom" of some pre-historic housewife. They are plastered throughout with fine smooth mortar, and even in that remote age the mania for household decoration had a beginning: floor, walls and ceiling were colored a deep red, surrounded by a broad border of white.
The same cliff on which this house stands has on its side many other ruins—some half destroyed by gradual decay, some crushed by falling rocks, none so perfect as the one described; but all are crowded into the strangest unapproachable crevices of the cañon-wall, like the crannies which swallows choose to hold their nests, far removed from the possibility of depredation. Some are so utterly inaccessible that the explorers, with all their enthusiasm and activity, have never been able to reach them. How any beings not endowed with wings could live at such points it is hard to conceive: it makes one suspicious that the Cliff-dwellers had not quite outgrown the habits of monkey ancestors.
As the cañon widens with the descent of the stream, the ruins in the western wall increase in number. One fearful cliff a thousand feet in height is chinked all over its face with tiny houses of one room each, but only a few of them can be detected with the naked eye. One, which was reached by an explorer at the peril of his life, stands intact: ceiling and floor are of the natural rock, and the wall is built in a neat curve conforming to the shape of the ledge.
RUINS IN THE CAÑON OF THE MANCOS.
A mile farther down the stream there is a most interesting group of houses. Eight hundred feet above the valley there is a shelf in the cliff sixty feet in length that is quite covered by a house. The building contains four large rooms, a circular sacred apartment and smaller rooms of irregular shape. It was called by its discoverers "The House of the Sixteen Windows." Behind this house the cliff-side rises smooth and perpendicular thirty feet, but it can be scaled by an ancient stairway cut into it which ascends to a still higher ledge. The stairs lead to the very door of another house filling a niche a hundred and twenty feet long. A great canopy of solid rock overarches the little fortress, reaching far forward beyond the front wall, while from below it is absolutely unapproachable except by the one difficult stairway of niches cut in the rock. In time of war it must have been impregnable. These dwellings have given more ideas about their interior furnishing than any of the others. Among the accumulated rubbish were found corn and beans stored away. In the lower house were two large water-jars of corrugated pottery standing on a floor covered with neatly-woven rush matting. In a house not far above were found a bin of charred corn, and a polished hatchet of stone made with remarkable skill.
From this point onward both the valley and the cliffs are filled with the traces of a numerous population, every mile of travel bringing many fresh ones into sight. Among the cliff-houses there is of necessity a variety in form and size as great as the differences of the caves and crevices that hold them; but among the buildings of the low ground there is more uniformity, not only in this cañon, but in all the valleys of the region. Most of them may be classed as aggregated dwellings or pueblos with rectangular rooms, round watch-towers and large circular buildings. To these must be added a few which seem to have been built only for defence. The straight walls have generally fallen, except the parts supported by an angle of a building; but, as usual in old masonry, the circular walls have much better resisted decay.
About midway down the cañon the curved wall of a large ruin rises above the thicket. It is a building of very curious design. The outer wall was an exact circle of heavy masonry a hundred and thirty feet in circumference. Within, there is another circular wall, concentric with the outer, enclosing one round room with a diameter of twenty feet. The annular space between the two walls was divided by partitions into ten small apartments. Other buildings of the same type occur in this region, some of much larger size and with triple walls. Even in this one, which is comparatively well preserved, the original height is uncertain, though the ruin still stands about fifteen feet high. The vast quantity of débris about some of them indicates that they were of no insignificant height, and their perfect symmetry of form, the careful finish of the masonry, the large dimensions and great solidity, made them the most imposing architectural works of that ancient people. I find no reason to doubt that they were their temples, and the presumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.
Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the life of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the years, perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red men from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier families at the hands of the same bloodthirsty savages is heartrending. What was it to those who saw year by year their whole race's life withering away, crushed by those wild tribes?
Near the lower end of the cañon stands one of the most perfect of these towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque and as full of mystery as the round-towers of Ireland.
After the stream breaks from its long confinement out into the open plain of the San Juan Valley the traces of old life are still abundant, but they present no features very different from those above. At the cañon's mouth an Indian trail strikes away toward the north-west. It passes a remarkable group of ruins at a spot called Aztec Springs, and continues to the McElmo, the next arroya, or dry stream-bed, west of the Rio Mancos. Aztec Springs no longer deserve the name, for within a short time the last trace of water has disappeared from the spot, showing that the slow drying up of the great South-west country, which has been going forward for ages, and which starved out the old inhabitants, is still progressing. In the dry season there is no water within many miles of this spot, though it is strewn with the remains of stone buildings covering several acres and indicating a large population of industrious people who must have lived by agriculture. Until a long comparative study has been made of all the remains of this race it is mere guesswork to estimate the age of the ruins; but when the prostrate condition of these walls is compared with the state in which the Chaco ruins of New Mexico are found, and when we consider that the latter have no doubt been deserted for at least three hundred and fifty years, it is reasonable to suppose an age of a thousand years for these massive walls at Aztec Springs. Many other great structures of this region, which seem to be coeval with these, are situated many miles away from any perennial water, and the time which has elapsed since those sites were suitable for large farming-towns must be counted by centuries. In this group are two large quadrangular buildings with walls still fifteen feet high, two of the circular estufas, besides a multitude of half-distinguishable walls of dwellings. It is the largest group of ruins in Colorado.
CIRCULAR RUIN IN THE CAÑON OF THE MANCOS.
Not many miles beyond these so-called springs the trail leads into the dry bed of the McElmo near its head, and another long succession of antiquities is entered upon, but to enumerate them further would be tedious, for the ruins of the Mancos are good representatives of all those which are found along the courses of the Animas, La Plata, McElmo, Montezuma, Chelley and other tributary valleys of the San Juan. Nevertheless, there are a few buildings here and there of some unusual interest which cannot be passed by without mention. On the verge of a little side-cañon of the McElmo there is a curious instance of the keen ingenuity of this people in taking every advantage of the fantastic, castle-like shapes which Nature has formed out of the cañon-walls. High on the edge of the mesa appears the ragged outline of a ruinous watch-tower sharply drawn against the clear, unvarying blue of the sky. It seems to be a tower of unusual height, but a closer view shows it to be half of Nature's building. A tall fragment of rock, torn from its bed, has rolled down the slope to the edge of the steep descent. This rock the old builders have chosen to crown with a little round tower where a sentinel, guarding the village behind him from stealthy attacks, could command a wide sweep of country. The same thing on a larger scale is found at another point where the dry McElmo meets with the drier Hovenweep—a tributary without tribute. In this position stands an enormous rock nearly cubical in shape. Its high sides make it a natural fortress strong against an enemy without artillery, and to its natural strength the Cliff-dwellers have added a battlement of masonry. But among all the ruined strongholds of the region that which is called the Legendary Rock has a pre-eminent interest on account of the Moqui romance or tradition which clings to it. The rock is a grand and solitary crag standing on a plateau of sandstone from which the soil is washed away. It is far from water: a garrison must have been dependent wholly on the very precarious rain-supply. About it runs an outer rampart of stone, and on the rock itself is built a fortress. It is several years since an aged member of the Moqui tribe first confided to a white man versed in his language the legend of this rock. It has been widely published, and considered of much significance. The Moqui patriarch related how his people in the old time were many. Their tribe dwelt in the North-east. One year they were visited by strangers from the North, who came peaceably at first, but came again another year, and year by year encroached and grew more warlike. At last the Northern strangers gained the mastery and drove them from their homes. In a long, slow struggle the Moqui forefathers gradually lost their ground, till at last they made one final, desperate fight for their old homes at the fortress of the Legendary Rock. They conquered their besiegers, but with such fearful carnage that the rocks bear still the stains of the blood-streams that flowed in that battle, and the remnant of the besieged were glad to make an unmolested retreat to the mesas of Arizona, where they dwell to this day.
The story is an interesting one, and has been honored by the explorers with a place in their government report, for it shows a belief among the Moquis that those old builders were their kinsmen. But, considering the fact that the first Spanish discoverers found the Moqui tribe in nearly the same condition as we see it now, and that this story therefore must have been handed down for at least three hundred years among an unlettered people, I am as much disposed to distrust the other details of it as I am to doubt that the red iron-stains in the rock were caused by the blood of their ancestors.
In the neighboring Montezuma Cañon, just beyond the State border, there are some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great size. One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary mesa, is constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the pre-historic masonry of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line of fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.
All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written record of their existence except their own rude picture-writing cut or painted on the cañon-walls, and it is not likely that those hieroglyphics will ever be deciphered. But much may be inferred from their evident kinship to the Moquis of our time; and the resemblance of the ancient architecture and ceramics to the arts as they are still practised in the degenerate pueblos of Arizona gives us many intimations in regard to the habits of the Cliff-dwellers.
It was centuries ago—how long a time no one will ever know—when that old race was strong and numerous, filling the great region from the Rio Grande to the Colorado of the West, and from the San Juan Mountains far down into Northern Mexico. They must have numbered many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. It is not probable that they were combined under one government or that they were even closely leagued together, but that they were essentially one in blood and language is strongly indicated by the similarity of their remains. That they were sympathetic in a common hostility to the dangerous savage tribes about them can hardly be doubted. They were of peaceful habits and lived by agriculture, having under cultivation many thousands of acres in the rich river-bottoms, which they knew well how to irrigate from streams swollen in summer by the melting snows of the high mountain-ranges. We read of their dry canals in Arizona, so deep that a mounted horseman can hide in them. We know that they raised crops of corn and beans, and in the south cotton, which they skilfully wove. That they had commercial dealings across their whole country is shown by the quantity of shell-ornaments brought from the Pacific coast which are found in their Colorado dwellings. They did not understand the working of metals, but their implements of stone are of most excellent workmanship. Their weapons indicate the practice of hunting, and while the race was still numerous their forts and their sharp obsidian arrows made easy their resistance to the wandering savage hordes.
RUINS AT AZTEC SPRINGS.
I believe that no instance can be cited of a people still in their Stone Age who have surpassed that old race in the mason's art: indeed, I doubt if any such people has even approached their skill in that respect. The difficulty of constructing a great work of well-squared, hammer-dressed stones is enormously increased if the masons must work only with stone implements. Imagine the infinite, toilsome patience of a people who in such a way could rear the ancient Pueblo Bonito of New Mexico, five hundred and forty feet long, three hundred and fourteen wide and four stories high! In one wall of a neighboring building of stone less carefully dressed it is estimated that there were originally no less than thirty million pieces, which were transported, fashioned and laid by men without a beast of burden or a trowel, chisel or hammer of metal.
Nothing marks more strikingly the vast advance which these people had made from the condition of their savage neighbors than their evident efforts not only for household comfort, but even for the beautifying of their homes. I have referred to the rush-carpeted floor of the "House of the Sixteen Windows" and the decorated walls of the two-story house on the Mancos; but they, like other semicivilized peoples, found the first expression for their love of the beautiful in the ceramic art. The variety of graceful forms and decorations found in their pottery is endless. In some regions the country for miles is strewn with the fragments of their earthenware. The ware is usually pale gray shading to white: the decoration is in black or red, often in the angular designs commonly called "Greek patterns." The Moquis of our time produce a handsome ware closely resembling that of the ancient people. But the old cliff-painters and the modern potters often sacrificed beauty to a passion for producing the most wildly-grotesque forms. There is a certain general resemblance, which often strikes me forcibly, but which is almost indefinable, between the ceramic and sculptured forms of the Mississippi Mound-builders, the Pueblo tribes and the ancient Mexicans. The resemblance seems to lie partly in a certain capacity which those peoples possessed in common of producing the most frightfully-grotesque forms ever evolved by the human imagination—forms plainly intended to suggest living beings, yet not at all transgressing the injunction against "anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth." The resemblance seems to me very significant.
At the time of the Spanish conquest the Pueblo tribes were worshippers of the sun and fire, like all the races of this continent which were above barbarism. To-day, even in those pueblos where a corrupted form of the Roman faith is accepted, there are traces of the old sun-worship mingled with it, and in all pueblos there are large circular rooms called estufas reserved for councils and for worship. The invariable appearance of estufas among the ruined towns, and even on the ledges of the cliffs, shows what sacredness was attached to the circular room, which perhaps was symbolic of the sun's orb: it indicates a unity of religious faith between the ancients and moderns.
The priest who chronicled the events of the first expedition to New Mexico was impressed with the great ruined towns which they saw even before crossing the desert of Arizona. There is good reason to believe that the cliff-dwellings, the last retreats of a persecuted people, were abandoned before that time. But how could a people so numerous, intelligent and civilized fall a prey to stupid, roving savages? The wild tribes never could have won the fight against their more quick-witted neighbors if the ancients had not begun their own destruction.
The story which they have left recorded on the face of the country is of this sort. At some very remote time they began agriculture in the valleys of the South-west. They found the rainfall of the region too limited for farming without irrigation, but the whole country was intersected by streams fed through summer by the snows of the mountain-tops and the abundant springs of the wooded slopes and uplands. Thus their crops were watered and yielded increase with a regularity unknown to farmers who must look to the summer rainfall for success. The people prospered, multiplied and spread over a wide country. In every green valley rose their great common dwellings and circular temples. By superior numbers and intelligence they were strong against their enemies. But the spreading population required a great wood-supply. The finest of the trees were felled for timbering their houses, and whole forests were swept away to give them fuel and perhaps to feed perpetual sacred fires. The country was all too little watered at the best, and the mountain-sides, once stripped of their covering, oftentimes dried up and no new growth of trees appeared. Old men began to observe that the streams did not maintain their even flow through the whole year as when they were young, and lamented the good old times when there was no lack of water for irrigation. The streams began to be swollen with disastrous floods in spring and winter, and to dwindle away alarmingly in summer. So through centuries the gradual destruction of the wood brought ever-increasing drought, and drought led in its train famine, disease and wholesale death. The people were decimated and discouraged, and on the northern frontier began to be at the mercy of savage raiders. They fled from their pleasant valley-homes to hide in caves and dens of the earth, and built the cliff-dwellings. There a remnant lingered in unceasing fear of the foes who coveted the fruits of their toil; but even from these refuges they were driven ages ago. Where they used to build villages and cultivate fields are now barren gulches where two or three times a year a resistless flood rushes down from the mountains that can no longer retain their moisture. Thus ended their national suicide.
RUINS IN MONTEZUMA CAÑON.
It was a strange ignorance that led them to their own destruction, was it not? Yet we as a nation from Maine to California are recklessly working the same ruin. We are stripping our mountains a hundred times more rapidly than they, but who cares whether the forests are restored?
As a child I played and bathed in a pretty tumbling brook among the Litchfield hills, and wondered that so small a stream but fifty years before had given power to all the mills now ruined on its banks. Twenty years more have passed, and now in the heat of summer there is hardly water for a child to bathe. The hills are stripped, the stream has dwindled, but the spring floods tear through the valley like a deluge. Even the larger streams that still turn the mill-wheels and make the wealth of Connecticut are not the trusty servants that they once were. In summer they grow weak and must be supplemented with steam, and at times they rise in fury and carry destruction before them. It is the beginning of woes, but our Atlantic slope with its heavy rainfall cannot easily be changed to a desert. In the far West it is different. Colorado, Nevada and California, with a less regular rainfall and with greater floods and smaller streams, would soon find the desert encroaching on the habitable land. But in these very States the waste of timber is most extravagant. Mining-camps and cities devour the woods about them, and in every dry summer many hundred square miles are burned by the recklessness of Indians and white men. Where the Californian mountains have been cleared, the browsing millions of sheep keep down all new growth, and, bringing great wealth in our age, they threaten to impoverish posterity.
The dreary experiment has been tried by the ancient races of both continents. Why should we repeat it? The question should command the earnest attention of State and national governments. In our own land already one old race has wrought its own destruction in this same way.
Alfred Terry Bacon.
Footnote
[1] ]In studying the ruins of the Mancos and neighboring cañons I have made constant use of the reports of explorations by Mr. W. H. Jackson and Mr. W. H. Holmes in Bulletins of U. S. Geolog. and Geograph. Survey, Second Series, No. 1, and Annual Report of the same survey for 1876.