han double that age. As there is no
positive knowledge as to when the cliff dwellers flourished, one man's
guess on the subject is as good as another's.

An important discovery was recently made near Mancos, Colorado, where a
party of explorers found in some old cliff dwellings graves beneath
graves that were entirely different from anything yet discovered. They
were egg-shaped, built of stone and plastered smoothly with clay. They
contained mummies, cloth, sandals, beads and various other trinkets.
There was no pottery, but many well-made baskets, and their owners have
been called the basket makers. There was also a difference in the
skulls found. The cliff dwellers' skull is short and flattened behind,
while the skulls that were found in these old graves were long, narrow
and round on the back.[2]

Rev. H. M. Baum, who has traveled all over the southwest and visited
every large ruin in the country, considers that Canon de Chelly and its
branch, del Muerto, is the most interesting prehistoric locality in the
United States. The Navajos, who now live in the canon, have a
tradition that the people who occupied the old cliff houses were all
destroyed in one day by a wind of fire.[3] The occurrence, evidently,
was similar to what happened recently on the island of Martinique, when
all the inhabitants of the village of St. Pierre perished in an hour by
the eruption of Mont Pelee.

Contemporaneous with the cliff dwellers there seems to have lived a
race of people in the adjoining valleys who built cities and tilled the
soil. Judged by their works they must have been an industrious,
intelligent and numerous people. All over the ground are strewn broken
pieces of pottery that are painted in bright colors and artistic
designs which, after ages of exposure to the weather, look as fresh as
if newly made, The relics that have been taken from the ruins are
similar to those found in the cliff houses, and consist mostly of stone
implements and pottery.

In the Gila valley, near the town of Florence, stands the now famous
Casa Grande ruin, which is the best preserved of all these ancient
cities. It was a ruin when the Spaniards first discovered it, and is a
type of the ancient communal house. Its thick walls are composed of a
concrete adobe that is as hard as rock, and its base lines conform to
the cardinal points of, the compass. It is an interesting relic of a
past age and an extinct race and, if it cannot yield up its