xceptionally dry climate.

The houses are invariably built upon high cliffs on shelving rocks in
places that are almost inaccessible. In some instances they can only
be reached by steps cut into the solid rock, which are so old and worn
that they are almost obliterated. Their walls so nearly resemble the
stratified rocks upon which they stand, that they are not easily
distinguished from their surroundings.

The cliffs are often sloping, sometimes overhanging, but more
frequently perpendicular. The weather erosion of many centuries has
caused the softer strata of exposed rocks in the cliffs to disintegrate
and fall away, which left numberless caverns wherein this ancient and
mysterious people chose to build their eyrie homes to live with the
eagles. The houses are built of all shapes and sizes and, apparently,
were planned to fit the irregular and limited space of their
environment. Circular watch towers look down from commanding heights
which, from their shape and position, were evidently intended to serve
the double purpose of observation and defense.

In the search for evidence of their antiquity it is believed that data
has been found which denotes great age. In the construction of some of
their houses, notably those in the Mancos Canon, is displayed a
technical knowledge of architecture and a mathematical accuracy which
savages do not possess; and the fine masonry of dressed stone and
superior cement seem to prove that Indians were not the builders. On
the contrary, to quote a recent writer, "The evidence goes to show that
the work was done by skilled workmen who were white masons and who
built for white people in a prehistoric age." In this connection it is
singular, if not significant, that the natives when first discovered
believed in a bearded white man whom they deified as the Fair God of
whose existence they had obtained knowledge from some source and in
whose honor they kept their sacred altar fires burning unquenched.

The relics that have been found in the ruins are principally implements
of the stone age, but are of sufficient variety to indicate a
succession of races that were both primitive and cultured and as widely
separated in time as in knowledge.

The cliff dwellings were not only the abodes of their original
builders, but were occupied and deserted successively by the chipped
stone implement maker, the polisher of hard stone, the basket maker and
the weaver.

Among the relics that ha