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They at once cleared a fine large room in the town-house for our occupancy, prepared four beds of boards covered with petates, and brought from the priest's house, hard by, blankets, sheets, and pillows for my own use. Arrangements were also made for our eating with the priest, Padre Manzano, with whom we fared in truly regal fashion.

To the south and southeast spectral peaks tower to the clouds. Northward the blue shadows of the Sante Fe fall upon the pine-clad foot-hills. Along the lower slopes of the Manzano are the ruins of the ancient pueblos. Abo and Cuarac are mounds of fallen buildings and desert-blown sand. Solemn in their grandeur, they dominate the lonely landscape in a land of adobe shacks.

Such is the result of soundings made with the greatest care by Don Antonio Manzano. When we reflect on the vast depths of all the lakes of Switzerland, which, notwithstanding their position in high valleys, almost reach the level of the Mediterranean, it appears surprising that greater cavities are not found at the bottom of the lake of Valencia, which is also an Alpine lake.

To the south there extends a dreary plain as far as the salt marshes of the Manzano; eastward spread the wooded slopes of the plateau; above the Pecos border upon the basin. To the north the plain rises gradually, traversed only by the northern creston, until it merges into the plain of Santa .

Our pleasant stay at Huauhtla came to an equally pleasant termination. Having stated the number of animals and human carriers necessary, and the hour at which we wished to start, we found every preparation made on awaking in the morning, and at 6:25, after an excellent breakfast with Padre Manzano, we sallied forth.

The Piros extended in the sixteenth century as far north in the Rio Grande valley as Alamillo at least, and a branch of them had established themselves on the borders of the great eastern plains of New Mexico, southeast of the Manzano.

The fable of the Quivira, the golden city marked now by the ruins of the Piro pueblo of Tabiri, south of the salt-deposits of the Manzano, is still potent in Arizona and New Mexico to lure the treasure-seeker. Three hundred and fifty years ago it inspired a march across the plains that dwarfs the famous march of the Greeks to the sea.

You can visit a pueblo at Isleta, a short run by railroad from Albuquerque; but Isleta has been so frequently "toured" by sightseers, I preferred to go to the less frequented pueblos at Laguna and Acoma, just south of the western Manzano National Forests, and on up to the three mesas of the Moki Reserve in Arizona.

Draw a line from the Manzano Forests east of Albuquerque west through Isleta and Laguna and Acoma and Zuñi and the three mesas of Arizona to Oraibi and Hotoville for 400 miles to the far west, and along that line you will find ruins of churches, temples, council halls, call them what you will, which antedate the coming of the Spaniards by so many centuries that not even a tradition of their object remained when the conquerors came.

North of the Piros, between a line drawn south of Isleta and the Mesa del Canjelon, the Tiguas occupied a number of villages, mostly on the western bank of the river, and a few Tigua settlements existed also on the margin of the eastern plains beyond the Sierra del Manzano.