On the sides of these inaccessible cliffs we noticed several cliff
houses, but so high were they perched above us that they were almost
invisible. To reach them at their dizzy altitude was impossible, but
we were able to enter some caves a few hundred feet above our camp,
finding in them nothing but charred mescal and other evidences of
Apache camps. Their walls and entrances are blackened with smoke, but
no sign of masonry was detected.
We moved our camp westward from this canyon (which, from a great cliff
resembling the Parthenon, I called Temple canyon), following the base
of the precipitous mountains to a second canyon, equally beautiful but
not so grand, and built our fire in a small grove of scrub oak and
cottonwood. In this lonely place Lloyd had lived over a winter,
watching his stock, and had dug a well and erected a corral. We
adopted his name for this camp and called it Lloyd canyon. There was
no water in the well, but a few rods beyond it there was a pool, from
which we watered our horses. On the first evening at this camp we
sighted a bear, which gave the name Honanki, "Bear-house," to the
adjacent ruined dwellings.
The enormous precipice of red rock west of our camp at Lloyd's corral
hid Honanki from view at first, but we soon found a trail leading
directly to it, and during our short stay in this neighborhood we
remained camped near the cottonwoods at the entrance to the canyon,
not far from the abandoned corral. Our studies of Honanki led to the
discovery of Palatki (figure 247), which we investigated on our return
to Temple canyon. I will, therefore, begin my description of the
Red-rock cliff houses with those last discovered, which, up to the
visit which I made, had never been studied by archeologists.