olorado, travels for more than three
hundred miles along a channel of its own cutting, never less than a mile
below the level of the surrounding country. If we remember that we take
from fifteen to twenty minutes to walk a mile, and then fancy that mile
standing on end like a pole, we may get some idea of what the cliffs are
like in these canyons.

The currents of the mountain rivers, like those of all waters flowing
from high lands, are very strong and swift; and when the snows are
melting, or after heavy rainfalls, the force of the stream is enormous.
The result is that the channel is worn deeper and deeper, whilst the
cliffs at the side are eaten away in places. The hardest rocks remain in
jagged points and ledges, and the softer parts are in time washed away,
leaving caverns of all shapes and sizes.

The kind of people who lived in this country of highlands and canyons
were tribes of American Indians, whose food was chiefly found in
hunting, and whose main interests lay in making war upon their
neighbours. Some tribes were strong, and others weak, so that by degrees
the powerful folk drove away the less warlike people from the rich
hunting-grounds and wooded country into the barren rocks. Now, if these
hunted tribes were to exist at all, it was clear they must find some
means of protecting themselves; thus it may have happened that
scrambling up the cliffs one day to avoid their foes, some fugitive
Indian came into one of the dwelling-places hollowed out in bygone ages
by the river which roared below. What joyful news he would carry home to
his friends when he ventured to go back to them! Shelter from rain, and
snow, and wind! Homes easily defended from marauding foes! What a new
life of ease for the persecuted people! One by one families would climb
the cliffs, until at last a great population looked down from their
eyries in certain gorges of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, where
only eagles or mountain-goats might be supposed to dwell.

The table-lands above the ravines were, as a rule, fairly fertile, and
the Indians were able to grow maize, or Indian corn. When they were
obliged to give up the roving life of hunters, animal food must have
become a scarce luxury.

Being an industrious race, they were not long content to live in the
rugged caverns as nature made them, but with wonderful labour built
walls, floors, and roofs, to make their homes more comfortable, and to
keep out the icy winds which howled u