ll as animals and plants. Centuries ago
it was inhabited by tribes of Indians, who, long before Columbus saw
America, built thousands of stone houses in its crags, and large ones,
some of them several stories high, with hundreds of rooms, on the mesas
of the adjacent regions. Their cliff-dwellings, almost numberless, are
still to be seen in the canyon, scattered along both sides from top to
bottom and throughout its entire length, built of stone and mortar
in seams and fissures like swallows' nests, or on isolated ridges and
peaks. The ruins of larger buildings are found on open spots by the
river, but most of them aloft on the brink of the wildest, giddiest
precipices, sites evidently chosen for safety from enemies, and
seemingly accessible only to the birds of the air. Many caves were also
used as dwelling-places, as were mere seams on cliff-fronts formed by
unequal weathering and with or without outer or side walls; and some of
them were covered with colored pictures of animals. The most interesting
of these cliff-dwellings had pathetic little ribbon-like strips of
garden on narrow terraces, where irrigating water could be carried to
them--most romantic of sky-gardens, but eloquent of hard times.

In recesses along the river and on the first plateau flats above its
gorge were fields and gardens of considerable size, where irrigating
ditches may still be traced. Some of these ancient gardens are still
cultivated by Indians, descendants of cliff-dwellers, who raise corn,
squashes, melons, potatoes, etc., to reinforce the produce of the many
wild food-furnishing plants--nuts, beans, berries, yucca and cactus
fruits, grass and sunflower seeds, etc.--and the flesh of animals--deer,
rabbits, lizards, etc. The canyon Indians I have met here seem to
be living much as did their ancestors, though not now driven into
rock-dens. They are able, erect men, with commanding eyes, which nothing
that they wish to see can escape. They are never in a hurry, have a
strikingly measured, deliberate, bearish manner of moving the limbs and
turning the head, are capable of enduring weather, thirst, hunger,
and over-abundance, and are blessed with stomachs which triumph over
everything the wilderness may offer. Evidently their lives are not
bitter.

The largest of the canyon animals one is likely to see is the wild
sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs
that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices