ill wonder that any of the people escaped. The seemingly endless
succession of deserts and mountains, the lack of food, and the
scanty supply of water, often unfit to drink, would lead one to
think that strangers to these wilds would be far more likely to
perish than to find their way out.

THE CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

The region of the high plateaus of the southwestern United States
presents many strange and interesting aspects. Equipped with pack
animals for the trails, and conducted by a guide who knows the
position of the springs, one might wander for months over this
rugged and semi-arid region without becoming weary of the wonderful
sights which Nature has prepared.

In travelling over the plateau one has to consider that often for
long distances the precipitous walls of the canons cannot be scaled,
and that the springs are few and inaccessible. To one not acquainted
with the plateau it appears incapable of supporting human life.
There is little wild game and scarcely any water to irrigate the
dry soil.

However, if the country is examined closely, the discovery will be
made that it was once inhabited, though by a people very different
from the savage Indians who wandered over it when the white men
first came. These early people had permanent homes and were much
more civilized than the Indians. They lived chiefly by agriculture,
cultivating little patches of land wherever water could be obtained.

Go in whatever way you will from the meeting point of the four
states and territories, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico,
and you will find the ruins of houses and forts. Upon the tops of
precipitous cliffs, in the caves with which the canon walls abound,
by the streams and springs, there are crumbling stone buildings, many
of them of great extent, and once capable of sheltering hundreds
of people. Scattered over the surface of the ground and buried in
the soil about the ruins are fragments of pottery, stone implements,
corn-cobs, and in protected spots the remains of corn and squash
stems.

The people who once inhabited these ruins have been called Cliff
Dwellers, because their homes are so frequently found clinging to
the cliffs, like the nests of birds, in the caverns and recesses
of the precipitous canon walls. The Cliff Dwellers have left no
written records, but from a study of their buildings and of the
materials found in them, and from the traces of irrigating ditches,
we are sure