formed of alternate layers of small and
large stones, held together with mortar.

Another pueblo, Chetho Kette, measures
thirteen hundred feet in circumference, and
was originally four stories high. It has
the remains of a hundred and twenty-four
rooms on the first story.

The most perfect of the ten ruined pueblos
discovered by Lieut. Simpson, in the Cañon
de Chaco, is that of Hungo Pavie (or the
Crooked Nose). Its circumference, including
the enclosed court, is eight hundred and
seventy-two feet; it faces, as usual, the
cardinal points, and contains one estufa, placed
in the northern wing of the building.

One or more estufas have been discovered
in each pueblo. Some are rectangular;
others circular. There are similar ruins in
the Valle de Chelly. The Navajo Indians,
in whose country these pueblos are situated,
say that they were built by Montezuma
and his people, at the time of their
emigration from north to south, and shortly
before their dispersion on the banks of the
Rio Grande, and over other parts of
Mexico.

The country occupying the fork between
the Great Colorado and the Colorado
Chiquito forms a part of that vast table-land,
the Colorado plateau, through which both
these streams pass in deep cañons.

The land is cut up into lofty mesas of
variable size, and is very arid and
worthless. The seven Moqui villages crest the
edges of some of the mesas which form the
south-eastern encampment of the Colorado
plateau. Further to the north-west, and
nearer the Colorado, there is another group
of pueblos in ruins, larger than those of the
Moqui Indians, but situated, like them, on
the flat summits of mesas, containing estufas,
reservoirs, terraces, aqueducts, and
walls of at least four stories high. No
trace has as yet been found of their former
inhabitants.

Next we come to the ruins on the
Colorado Chiquito and its southern tributaries.
There are ruins upon El Moro, ruins north
of Zuñi, old Zuñi, and others along the
Zuñi river; ruins also on the Rio Puerco
of the west, amongst which our parties
found abundance of pottery; and there are
most extensive ruins in the main valley,
both above the falls and between the falls,
and the entrance of the cañon of the
Chiquito, scattered along a fertile basin of at
least a hundred miles in length. At Pueblo
Creek, the remains of several fortified
pueblos were found, crowning the heights
which command Aztec Pass; but west of
this point (longitude one hundred and
thirteen degrees west), no other ruins have
as yet been discovered.

Leaving the basin of the Colorado
Chiquito, we pass southward to that of the Rio
Gila, where the most extensive ruins of all
are to be found. Some fine streams enter
this river on the north, draining a country
very little known, but of great interest,
and containing many fertile valleys. The
chief of these tributaries are the Rios
Preito, Bonito, San Carlos, Salinas, and
Rio Verde, which latter two unite before
joining the Gila, twelve miles from the
Pima villages, and lastly, the Agua Fia.
The great New Mexican guide Lerou,
started northward from the Pima villages
in May, 1854, crossed over to the junction
of the Salinas with the Rio Verde (also
called Rio de San Francisco), ascended the
latter stream, and crossed from it to the
thirty-fifth parallel route along the Colorado
Chiquito. He represents the Rio Verde as
a fine large stream; in some cases rapid
and deep, in others, spreading out into
wide lagoons.

The ascent was by gradual steppes,
stretching out on either side into plains
which abounded in timber—pine, oak,
ash, walnut, sycamore, and cotton-wood.
The river banks were covered with ruins
of stone houses and regular fortifications.
They were built on the most fertile tracts of
the valley, where were signs of acequias and
of cultivation. The walls were of solid
masonry, of rectangular form, some twenty
or thirty paces in length, and from ten to
fifteen feet in height. They were usually
of two stories, with small apertures or
loop-holes for defence when besieged, and
reminded him strongly of the Moqui
pueblos. At one place he encountered a
well-built fortified town, ten miles distant
from the nearest water.

Other travellers report many ruined
pueblos along the Salinas, others on the
San Carlos, and several very extensive
ones in the fertile Tonto basin, which is
drained by a tributary of the Salinas.
Of many of the ruins on the Gila itself,
and in the valleys of its southern
tributaries, I can speak from personal
knowledge. A little west of the northern
extremity of the Burro mountains, the Rio Gila
leaves the Santa Rita, and other ranges, and
meanders for a distance of from seventy to
a hundred miles through an open valley of
considerable width. This long strip of
fertile land is studded throughout with
deserted pueblos, which at the present
time belong almost entirely to the third
class—viz., those of which the foundations