bably a dozen acres covered with apricot and peach trees....
The Rio de Jemez, upon which the pave lies, is an affluent of the Rio
Grande, varies from thirty to fifty feet in breadth, is of a rapid
current.... Patches of good corn and wheat skirt it here and there
along its banks, and the extent of cultivable land bordering it may be
estimated at about a mile in breadth."

We are more interested, however, in ruins testifying to past greatness.
"Six miles up the river you come to the union of two canyons--the
Guadalupe and San Diego. Where the mesa between these canyons narrows
itself to a point, are the ruins of two pueblos, one upon the lower
prominence of the mesa, the other upon the mesa proper, and only
approachable by two narrow, steep trails, the mesa everywhere else being
nearly perpendicular, and seven hundred and fifty feet high. The view
from the mesa is picturesque and imposing in the extreme. Far beneath,
to the right and left, a stream makes its way between the colossal
walls of the sandstone upon the narrow width of the mesa; near frightful
precipices are the ruins of a town of eighty houses, partly in parallel
rows, partly in squares, and partly perched between overhanging rocks,
the rim and surfaces of which formed the walls of rooms, the gaps and
interstices being filled in artificially."

"Nearly every house had one story and two rooms. The building material
was trachytic rock as found upon the mesa. Broken pottery, charred corn,
and millstones for grinding corn, were found in some of the rooms. The
roofs had all fallen in, and so also had many of the side walls, in the
construction of which wood was but little used. Pinon trees have taken
root within many of the former rooms. Upon asking my Indian guide
whether the former inhabitants of this town were obliged to descend the
steep and dangerous pathway every day to the creek to procure water,
he replied there were cisterns upon the mesa, in which rain, formerly
plentiful, was caught. He then called my attention to some conical heaps
of stones along the rim of the precipice which was the material for
defense."<12>

This description introduces us to another class of ruins--that is,
detached separate houses, different from the great communal structures
we have already described. What connection exists between these two
forms of houses will be studied in another place. As a rule, the
rooms in the detached houses are larger than in the communal houses.
E