n the rocks,
a hundred feet or so above a low flat which banked the river. At
another place there were hundreds of carvings on a similar wall which
overhung a little. Drawings of mountain-sheep were plentiful; there
was one representing a human figure with a bow and arrow, and with a
sheep standing on the arrow--their way of telling that he got the
sheep, no doubt. There were masked figures engaged in a dance, not
unlike some of the Hopi dances of to-day, as they picture them. There
were geometrical figures, and designs of many varieties. A small rock
building half covered with sand and the accumulations of many years
stood at the base of the cliff; and quantities of broken pottery were
scattered about the ruin. Farther down the river a pathway was worn
into the sandstone where countless bare and moccasined feet had
toiled, and climbed over the sloping wall to the mesa above. The ruins
in this section were not extensive, like those found in the tributary
canyons of the San Juan River, for instance, not a very great distance
from here. Possibly this people stopped here as they travelled back
and forth, trading with their cousins to the north; or the dwellings
may have been built by the scattered members of the tribe, when their
strongholds were assailed by the more warlike tribes that crowded in
on them from all sides.

What a story these cliffs could tell! What a romance they could
narrate of various tribes, as distinct from each other as the nations
of Europe, crowding each other; and at the last of this inoffensive
race, coming from the far south, it may be; driven from pillar to
post, making their last stand in this desert land; to perish of
pestilence, or to be almost exterminated by the blood-thirsty tribes
that surrounded them--then again, when the tide changed, and a new
type of invader travelled from the east, pushing ever to the west,
conquering all before them! But like the sphinx, the cliffs are silent
and voiceless as the hillocks and sand-dunes along the Nile, that
other desert stream, with a history no more ancient and momentous than
this.

That night we camped opposite the ruins of a dredge, sunk in the low
water at the edge of the river. This dredge had once represented the
outlay of a great deal of money. It is conceded by nearly all experts
that the sands of these rivers contain gold, but it is of such a fine
grain--what is known as flour gold--and the expense of saving it is so
great, that it has n