cave opened out of
the cliff; now a large one, now a small one. Then yawned, quite suddenly
and wonderfully above him, the great cavern of the cliff-dwellers.

It was still a goodly distance, and he tried to imagine, if it appeared
so huge from where he stood, what it would be when he got there. He
climbed the terrace and then faced a long, gradual ascent of weathered
rock and dust, which made climbing too difficult for attention to
anything else. At length he entered a zone of shade, and looked up.
He stood just within the hollow of a cavern so immense that he had no
conception of its real dimensions. The curved roof, stained by ages
of leakage, with buff and black and rust-colored streaks, swept up and
loomed higher and seemed to soar to the rim of the cliff. Here again was
a magnificent arch, such as formed the grand gateway to the valley, only
in this instance it formed the dome of a cave instead of the span of a
bridge.

Venters passed onward and upward. The stones he dislodged rolled down
with strange, hollow crack and roar. He had climbed a hundred rods
inward, and yet he had not reached the base of the shelf where the
cliff-dwellings rested, a long half-circle of connected stone house,
with little dark holes that he had fancied were eyes. At length he
gained the base of the shelf, and here found steps cut in the rock.
These facilitated climbing, and as he went up he thought how easily this
vanished race of men might once have held that stronghold against an
army. There was only one possible place to ascend, and this was narrow
and steep.

Venters had visited cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in ruins,
and of no great character or size but this place was of proportions that
stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by the hand of man, nor had
it been crumbled by the hand of time. It was a stupendous tomb. It had
been a city. It was just as it had been left by its builders. The little
houses were there, the smoke-blackened stains of fires, the pieces of
pottery scattered about cold hearths, the stone hatchets; and stone
pestles and mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by years
of grinding maize--lay there as if they had been carelessly dropped
yesterday. But the cliff-dwellers were gone!

Dust! They were dust on the floor or at the foot of the shelf, and their
habitations and utensils endured. Venters felt the sublimity of that
marvelous vaulted arch, and it seemed to gleam with a glory of