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He had explored the cliff-dwellings of the Navajo country and had looked upon the sea of peaks which tumbles away in measureless majesty from Uncompahgre's eagle-crested dome. He had peered into the boiling springs of the Yellowstone, and had lifted his eyes to the white Tetons whose feet are set in a mystic lake, around which the loons laugh all the summer long.
The few cliff-dwellings he had seen all ruins had left him with haunting memory of age and solitude and of something past. He had come, in a way, to be a cliff-dweller himself, and those silent eyes would look down upon him, as if in surprise that after thousands of years a man had invaded the valley.
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 almost entire absence of cliff-dwellings and the great abundance of cavate lodges has already been commented on, and as the geologic formations are favorable to the latter, and unfavorable to the former on the Verde, whereas the Canyon de Chelly, where there are hundreds of cliff-dwellings and no cavate lodges, the conditions are reversed, this abundance of cavate lodges may be set down as due to an accident of environment.
It was found that the cliff-dwellings were merely farming outlooks, and that the villages proper were almost always located on the canyon bottom. With slight modifications these conclusions may be extended over the Verde region and applied to the cavate lodges there.
Venters saw a number and variety of birds flitting among the trees. To his left, facing the stone bridge, an enormous cavern opened in the wall; and low down, just above the tree-tops, he made out a long shelf of cliff-dwellings, with little black, staring windows or doors. Like eyes they were, and seemed to watch him.
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.
When in our day men began to explore the Grand Canyon and its numberless tributaries, a great number of indications of man's presence were found on the rim, on the fault lines or breaks in the sheer precipitous walls, on the plateaus and in the Canyon beneath, in the shape of crude house ruins, lookout houses or forts, indifferent trails, cliff-dwellings, hewn-out water cisterns, mescal pits, with countless pieces of broken pottery, arrowheads, stone axes, hammers, mortars, pestles and even cemeteries. or places of cremation.
The ride down Bass's Trail is an interesting one, passing on the way two prehistoric water-pockets and several cliff-dwellings. On the plateau below, forty miles of trail riding, almost on the level, may be indulged in, before one descends the narrow Canyon to Bed Rock Camp and the river.
All that day we lay at Flagstaff, and after a good sleep, as there was no use keeping the party cooped up in their car, I drummed up some ponies and took the Cullens and Ackland over to the Indian cliff-dwellings. I don't think Lord Ralles gained anything by staying behind in a sulk, for it was a very jolly ride, or at least that was what it was to me.
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