WAGON-WHEEL GAP.—Wagon-Wheel Gap is in Rio Grande County, Col., in the southern part of the State and near the head of the Rio Grande River. Hot Springs, famous for their curative qualities, are located here. The scenery is exceedingly picturesque, and the place has become a favorite resort for health and pleasure seekers. It is said to be the best place for trout fishing in the West, and this fact largely increases its popularity with tourists. It is 310 miles south of Denver, and is reached by the Creede branch of the Denver and Rio Grande road. The elevation is 8448 feet.
SPANISH PEAKS, FROM LAS VEGAS, NEW MEXICO.
Santa Fe now has many things that belong to the present age: street cars, electric lights, etc., but she is, nevertheless, still a place of adobe houses, before which there is ever a varied commingling of Americans, Mexicans and Indians. She is also the center of archæological interest, for besides the ancient objects which are to be found within her urban limits, there are villages near-by which present all the aspects of the aborigines, practically as they appeared to Cortes and Coronado. These adobe places and their inhabitants are called pueblos, because that is the old Indian name signifying town. The pueblos in New Mexico are nineteen in number, and while varying in size, they are very similar in appearance, showing, as they do, no variation of architecture. The houses were built to accommodate from one hundred to several hundred persons, as the Pueblo Indians were communistic in their manner of living. Instead of being one or two-story structures, like the present style of Mexican and the old Spanish adobes, the houses were built one upon another, in a succession of terraces, sometimes five or more in number, the upper stories being accessible only by means of ladders. The most noted of these pueblos are Taos, Laguna, Acoma, Santa Clara, Zuni and Santo Domingo. Albuquerque was also originally an Indian pueblo, built upon a slight elevation of rock, and the place still contains several clusters of square, flat-roofed adobe houses, arranged in terraces, as before described. The walls of these strange dwellings are very thick, and the interior is gained, not through doors, but by entrance-ways cut in the roof, which is reached only by ladders. The Pueblo Indians have been pronounced by many ethnologists to be the oldest race now living on the continent, though many others regard them as being the descendants of the Aztecs, whose ancient kingdom of Cibola extended from Colorado and Utah on the north, to Central America on the south. The capital of this extinct empire is supposed to have been situated in Penal county, Arizona, the ruins of which are traceable along the Gila River, in what is known as the Casas Grandes. Remarkable stories have been told of the relics of this ruined city, enthusiasts often describing them as equal in grandeur to the prostrate columns and mighty archways that speak in imperishable stone of the magnificence of ancient Egyptian cities. The Montezumas were supposed to have held their court in the splendid stone palaces whose relics lie scattered through the Casas Grandes, and whose carvings and hieroglyphics seem to attest the departed glory of a once mighty people. These famous ruins are twelve miles north of Florence, a station on the Southern Pacific, and are in a region of great picturesqueness, which is traversed by a good wagon-road running along the Gila River. The route is through an arid plain, in which the only vegetation is mesquite and cactus, but the parched desert is gracefully confined by a beautiful and opalescent range of mountains, while overhead is a sapphirine sky more brilliant than ever hung over Italy. The river margin is like a blue wave, colored as it is by the tossing heads of wild lilac flowers, which find protection from the beating sun under the waving branches of banks of willows that stoop low to drink from the river. There, under the shadows of the Tucson Mountains and the Sierra Catarina range, are the colossal ruins of the Casas Grandes. The buildings, of which confused heaps are all that now remain, were of irregular style, but of some architectural pretension, for the walls were constructed of concrete, moulded into blocks nearly three feet square. The principal structure, which has long been called Montezuma’s Palace, was about sixty feet long by fifty broad, and stood five stories, or forty feet high. For windows there was a square aperture over each door, wholly insufficient for either light or ventilation, though the ancient Indians were not partial to either, apparently preferring darkness; and living in the closest communal state, they appreciated fresh air like they did the storm and cold, only when it was on the outside.
LOS PINOS VALLEY, LOOKING WEST.—This beautiful photograph gives us a splendid view of cañon, table-land and mountain scenery. It is rugged and picturesque, with a fringe of distant snow-covered mountains as a central background. From the high table-lands to the right, a view of surpassing grandeur and beauty bursts upon the enraptured vision, repaying the tourist for all his pains in climbing to the exalted heights. Here the atmosphere is always cool and invigorating, and the weariness and lassitude of a warmer and more humid climate are not experienced.