nvaded the neighboring
mesas, where they built pueblos and more ambitious structures.

Then, apparently suddenly, for they left behind them many of their
household goods, and left unfinished an elaborate temple to their god,
the sun, they vanished. There is no clew to the reason or the manner of
their going.

Meantime European civilization was pushing in all directions. Columbus
discovered America; De Soto explored the southeast and ascended the
Mississippi; Cortez pushed into Mexico and conquered the Aztecs; Spanish
priests carried the gospel north and west from the Antilles to the
continent; Raleigh sent explorers to Virginia; the Pilgrim Fathers
landed in Massachusetts; the white man pushed the Indian aside, and at
last the European pioneer sought a precarious living on the sands of the
southwest.

One December day in 1888 Richard and Alfred Wetherill hunted lost cattle
on the top of one of the green mesas north and west of the Mancos River.
They knew this mesa well. Many a time before had they rounded up their
herds and stalked the deer among the thin cedar and pinyon forests.
Often, doubtless, in their explorations of the broad Mancos Valley
below, they had happened upon ruins of primitive isolated or grouped
stone buildings hidden by sage-brush, half buried in rock and sand. No
doubt, around their ranch fire, they had often speculated concerning the
manner of men that had inhabited these lowly structures so many years
before that sometimes aged cedars grew upon the broken walls.

But this December day brought the Wetherills the surprise of their
uneventful lives. Some of the cattle had wandered far, and the search
led to the very brink of a deep and narrow canyon, across which, in a
long deep cleft under the overhang of the opposite cliff, they saw what
appeared to be a city. Those who have looked upon the stirring spectacle
of Cliff Palace from this point can imagine the astonishment of these
ranchmen.

Whether or not the lost cattle were ever found is not recorded, but we
may assume that living on the mesa was not plentiful enough to make the
Wetherills forget them in the pleasure of discovering a ruin. But they
lost no time in investigating their find, and soon after crossed the
canyon and climbed into this prehistoric city. They named it Cliff
Palace, most inappropriately, by the way, for it was in fact that most
democratic of structures, a community dwelling. Pushing their
explorations farther, presentl