tes
with the record of a military expedition some months before the Puritans
landed at Plymouth. There seems to be nothing especial to describe about
the ruins. Both Simpson and Whipple notice that the masonry seems to be
unusually good. As it must have been very difficult to procure water,
the location must have been chosen solely for the protection it
afforded. The early Spanish accounts contain the names of one hundred
and twenty-six pueblos. Some are, however, mentioned two or three times.
Mr. Bandelier has succeeded in identifying every one. The Rio Puerco
Valley was never a very prosperous one, and the river is scarcely a
permanent one. At present a few ruins at Poblazon, for instance, are to
be seen, and the valley looks poor and barren.

The valley of the Rio Grande River was occupied by a number of Pueblo
tribes, and there are at present eight inhabited pueblos along this
river, in New Mexico, and one in Texas. The region around Bernalillo was
a prosperous section. At intervals, up and down the river, and along its
tributaries, we can still trace low crumbling ruins, evidence of an old
pueblo. If the statements of the Spanish writers are to be believed, the
number of inhabited towns, at the time of the conquest, was at least ten
times that now existing. The population could never have exceeded forty
thousand. At present it contains about nine thousand. Still making
all allowance for Spanish exaggeration, we are convinced that it was a
thickly populated country at the time of the conquest.

One of the most interesting pueblos in New Mexico is Jemez, on a river
of that name, sixty miles west of Santa Fe. We speak of it here because
it is the center of a most interesting group of ruins. Like the pueblo
of Zuni, it is a remnant only of a prosperous people. The reports
of Coronado's expedition frequently mention Jemez, though it may be
doubtful whether they refer to the pueblo of that name now, or to one
of the numerous ruined ones in the immediate vicinity. Jemez is a
prosperous pueblo, having fine fields, large irrigating ditches, and
extensive flocks of sheep.

Simpson describes it in 1849 as follows: "The pueblo of Jemez is an
Indian town of between four and five hundred inhabitants,... and is
built upon two or three parallel streets, the houses being of adobe
construction, and having second stories disposed retreatingly upon the
first, to which access is had by means of ladders.... About the premises
are pro