of Aminas River, east of the Mancos;<19> and he also speaks of the ruins
at the commencement of McElmo Canyon as being large communal buildings.
We should judge from Mr. Jackson's report just given that these ruins
were rather small clusters of houses of the same design as the ruins at
Apache Springs.

Near the Utah boundary line we notice the Hovenweep Creek joining the
McElmo from the north. The mesa, narrowing to a point where the two
canyons meet, is covered with ruins much like what we have described
already. The Hovenweep is appropriately named, meaning "deserted
valley."

Illustration of Ruins in the Hovenweep Canyon.--------

Further west still is the Montezuma Valley. Mr. Jackson's party found
the ruins so numerous as to excite surprise at the numbers this narrow
valley must have supported. He says, "We camped at the intersection of a
large canyon coming in from the west.... At this point the bottoms
widen out to from two to three hundred yards in width, and are literally
covered with ruins, evidently those of an extensive settlement or
community, although at the present time water was so scarce (there not
being a drop within a radius of six miles) that we were compelled to
make a dry camp. The ruins consist evidently of great solid mounds of
rock _debris,_ piled up in rectangular masses, covered with earth and a
brush growth, bearing every indication of extreme age--just how old is
about as impossible to tell as to say how old the rocks of this canyon
are. This group is a mile in length, in the middle of the valley space,
and upon both sides of the wash. Each separate building would cover a
space, generally, of one hundred feet square; they are seldom subdivided
into more than two or four apartments. Relics were abundant, broken
pottery and arrow-points being especially plenty. At one place, where
the wash held partially undermined the foundation of ore of the large
buildings, it exposed a wall of regularly laid masonry, extending down
six feet beneath the superincumbent rubbish to the old floor-level,
covered with ashes and the remains of half-charred sticks of juniper."

Lower down, the valley was noted for little projecting tongues of rock
extending out into the canyon, sometimes connected with the main walls
of the canyon by narrow ledges of rock, and in cases even this had
disappeared, leaving detached masses of rock standing quite alone.
"Within a distance of fifteen miles there are some sixteen o