incredible rapidity, hardly affording us time to withdraw to a safe
distance, when it burst from the orifice with terrific momentum, rising
in a column the full size of this immense aperture to the height of
sixty feet; and through and out of the apex of this vast aqueous mass
five or six lesser jets or round columns of water, varying in size from
six to fifteen inches in diameter, were projected to the marvellous
height of two hundred and fifty feet. These lesser jets, so much higher
than the main column, and shooting through it, doubtless proceed from
auxiliary pipes leading into the principal orifice near the bottom,
where the explosive force is greater. If the theory that water by
constant boiling becomes explosive when freed from air be true, this
theory rationally accounts for all irregularities in the eruptions of
the geysers.
This grand eruption continued for twenty minutes, and was the most
magnificent sight we ever witnessed. We were standing on the side of the
geyser nearest the sun, the gleams of which filled the sparkling column
of water and spray with myriads of rainbows, whose arches were
constantly changing, dipping and fluttering hither and thither, and
disappearing only to be succeeded by others, again and again, amid the
aqueous columns, while the minute globules into which the spent jets
were diffused when falling sparkled like a shower of diamonds, and
around every shadow which the denser clouds of vapor, interrupting the
sun's rays, cast upon the column, could be seen a luminous circle,
radiant with all the colors of the prism, and resembling the halo of
glory represented in paintings as encircling the head of Divinity. All
that we had previously witnessed seemed tame in comparison with the
perfect grandeur and beauty of this display. Two of these wonderful
eruptions occurred during the twenty-two hours we remained in the
valley. This geyser we named the "Giantess."
A hundred yards distant from the Giantess was a silicious cone, very
symmetrical, but slightly corrugated upon its exterior surface, three
feet in height and five feet in diameter at its base, and having an oval
orifice twenty-four by thirty-six and a half inches in diameter, with
scalloped edges. Not one of our company supposed that it was a geyser;
and among so many wonders it had almost escaped notice. While we were at
breakfast upon the morning of our departure, a column of water, entirely
filling the crater, shot from it, which, by accurate triangular
measurement, we found to be two hundred and nineteen feet in height. The
stream did not deflect more than four or five degrees from a vertical
line, and the eruption lasted eighteen minutes. We named it the
"Beehive."...
On our return to the lake from this basin we passed up the Fire-Hole
River to its source in the divide. Early in the morning, as we were
leaving the valley, the grand old geyser which stands sentinel at the
head of the valley gave us a magnificent parting display, and with
little or no preliminary warning it shot up a column of water about six
feet in diameter to the height of a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet,
and by a succession of impulses seemed to hold it up steadily for the
space of fifteen minutes, the great mass of water falling directly back
into the basin, and flowing over the edges and down the sides in large
streams. When the action ceases, the water recedes beyond sight, and
nothing is heard but the occasional escape of steam until another
exhibition occurs. This is one of the most accommodating geysers in the
basin, and during our stay played once an hour quite regularly. On
account of its apparent regularity, and its position overlooking the
valley, it was called by Messrs. Langford and Doane "Old Faithful." It
has built up a crater about twenty feet high around its base, and all
about it are decorations similar to those previously described.
On the morning of August 6 we ascended the mountains at the head of the
Fire-Hole River, on our return to the hot-spring camp on the Yellowstone
Lake. We had merely caught a glimpse of the wonderful physical phenomena
of this remarkable valley. We had just barely gleaned a few of the
surface observations, which only sharpened our desire for a larger
knowledge. There is no doubt in my mind that these geysers are more
active at certain seasons of the year than at others. We saw them in
midsummer, when the surface waters are greatly diminished. In the
spring, at the time of the melting of the snows, the display of the
first-class geysers must be more frequent and powerful. We left this
valley, with its beautiful scenery, its hot springs and geysers, with
great regret.
THE COUNTRY OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS.
ALFRED TERRY BACON.
[Ruskin, among his reasons for not visiting the United States,
declared that it would be impossible for him to exist, even for
a short interval, in a country that had no old castles. Had he
known it, he might have found here old castles in abundance,
older perhaps, and grander in situation, than any to be found
in his own land. These are the ruined dwellings of the ancient
inhabitants of the western canons and of the pueblo-builders of
Arizona and New Mexico. We give a traveller's account of the
Cliff-dwellers' habitations.]
The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days'
journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the
Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population,
lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuni. To the grief of the invaders,
they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural
people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they
searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the
pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization.
They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton, and
produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even
three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of
what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many
ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have
not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race
once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found them
declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane.
In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of
kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the
Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of
the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah,
Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of
the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people.
On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their
villages,--rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large
circular _estufas_, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of
the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the canons are scattered in
every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which give
us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten people.
And on commanding points, seen far away down the canons or across the
mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might signal to
the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians....
There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so great
a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the canyon of
the Little Rio Mancos in Southwestern Colorado. The stream rises in a
spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp called
Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open valley,
it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound canyon which cuts for
nearly thirty miles through a table-land called the Mesa Verde. The
canyon is wide enough to have permitted the old inhabitants to plant
their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either side to
a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and grooved
and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata and the
projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities for building
fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence. Therefore the
whole length of the canyon is filled with ruins, and for fifteen miles
beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the river meets the Rio
San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the ancient occupation.
The scenery of the canyon is wild and imposing in the highest degree. In
the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or weather-stains to dull the
brightness of the strata to the universal hoariness of moister climates:
the vertical cliffs, standing above long slopes of debris, are colored
with the brilliant tints of freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of
green follows the course of the rivulet winding down through the canyon
till it is lost to sight in the vista of crags. The utter silence and
solitude of the wilderness reigns through the valley. It is not occupied
by any savage tribe, and only a few white men within the last few years
have passed through it and told of its wonders; and yet its whole
length is but one series of houses and temples that were forsaken
centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a more exciting tour of exploration
than that which Mr. Jackson's party made on first entering this canyon in
1874.
Above the entrance of the canyon the evidences of prehistoric life begin.
On the bottom-land, concealed by shrubbery, are the half-obliterated
outlines of square and circular buildings. The houses were of large
size, and were plainly no temporary dwelling-places, for an accumulation
of decorated pottery fills the ground about them, indicating long
occupation. No doubt they were built of adobe,--masses of hard
clay dried in the sun,--which the wear of ages has reduced to
smoothly-rounded mounds. For some miles down the canyon remains of this
sort occur at short intervals, and at one point there stands a wall
built of squared sandstone blocks. Along the ledges of the cliffs on the
right bits of ruinous masonry are detected here and there, but for a
time there is nothing to excite close attention. At last a watchful eye
is arrested by a more interesting object perched at a tremendous height
on the western wall of the canyon. It is a house built upon a shelf of
rock between the precipices, but, standing seven hundred feet above the
stream and differing not at all in color from the crags about it, only
the sharpest eyesight can detect the unusual form of the building and
the windows marking the two stories.
The climb up to the house-platform is slow and fatiguing, but the
trouble is repaid by a sight of one of the most curious ruins on this
continent. Before the door of the house, part of the ledge has been
reserved for a little esplanade, and to make it broader three small
abutments of stone, which once supported a floor, are built on the
sloping edge of the rock. Beyond this the house is entered by a
small aperture which served as a door. It is the best specimen of a
Cliff-dweller's house that remains to our time. The walls are admirably
built of squared stones laid in a hard white mortar. The house is
divided into two stories of three rooms each. Behind it a semicircular
cistern nearly as high as the house is built against the side of it,
and a ladder is arranged for descending from an upper window to the
water-level. The floor of the second story was supported by substantial
cedar timbers, but only fragments of them remain. The roof, too, has
entirely disappeared, but the canopy of natural rock overhanging serves
to keep out the weather. The front rooms in both stories are the largest
and are most carefully finished. Perhaps they were the parlor and "best
bedroom" of some prehistoric housewife. They are plastered throughout
with fine smooth mortar, and even in that remote age the mania for
household decoration had a beginning: floor, walls, and ceiling were
colored a deep red, surrounded by a broad border of white.
The same cliff on which this house stands has on its side many other
ruins; some half destroyed by gradual decay, some crushed by falling
rocks, none so perfect as the one described; but all are crowded into
the strangest unapproachable crevices of the canyon-wall, like the
crannies which swallows choose to hold their nests, far removed from
the possibility of depredation. Some are so utterly inaccessible that
the explorers, with all their enthusiasm and activity, have never been
able to reach them. How any beings not endowed with wings could live at
such points it is hard to conceive: it makes one suspicious that the
Cliff-dwellers had not quite outgrown the habits of monkey ancestors.
As the canyon widens with the descent of the stream, the ruins in the
western wall increase in number. One fearful cliff a thousand feet in
height is chinked all over its face with tiny houses of one room each,
but only a few of them can be detected with the naked eye. One, which
was reached by an explorer at the peril of his life, stands intact:
ceiling and floor are of the natural rock, and the wall is built in a
neat curve conforming to the shape of the ledge.
A mile farther down the stream there is a most interesting group of
houses. Eight hundred feet above the valley there is a shelf in the
cliff sixty feet in length that is quite covered by a house. The
building contains four large rooms, a circular sacred apartment and
smaller rooms of irregular shape. It was called by its discoverers "The
House of the Sixteen Windows." Behind this house the cliff-side rises
smooth and perpendicular thirty feet, but it can be scaled by an ancient
stairway cut into it which ascends to a still higher ledge. The stairs
lead to the very door of another house filling a niche a hundred and
twenty feet long. A great canopy of solid rock overarches the little
fortress, reaching far forward beyond the front wall, while from below
it is absolutely unapproachable except by the one difficult stairway of
niches cut in the rock. In time of war it must have been impregnable.
These dwellings have given more ideas about their interior furnishing
than any of the others. Among the accumulated rubbish were found corn
and beans stored away. In the lower house were two large water-jars of
corrugated pottery standing on a floor covered with neatly-woven rush
matting. In a house not far above were found a bin of charred corn, and
a polished hatchet of stone made with remarkable skill.
From this point onward both the valley and the cliffs are filled with
the traces of a numerous population, every mile of travel bringing many
fresh ones into sight. Among the cliff-houses there is of necessity a
variety in form and size as great as the differences of the caves and
crevices that hold them; but among the buildings of the low ground there
is more uniformity, not only in this canyon, but in all the valleys of
the region. Most of them may be classed as aggregated dwellings or
pueblos with rectangular rooms, round watch-towers and large circular
buildings. To these must be added a few which seem to have been built
only for defence. The straight walls have generally fallen, except the
parts supported by an angle of a building; but, as usual in old masonry,
the circular walls have much better resisted decay.
About midway down the canyon the curved wall of a large ruin rises above
the thicket. It is a building of very curious design. The outer wall
was an exact circle of heavy masonry a hundred and thirty feet in
circumference. Within, there is another circular wall, concentric with
the outer, enclosing one round room with a diameter of twenty feet. The
annular space between the two walls was divided by partitions into ten
small apartments. Other buildings of the same type occur in this region,
some of much larger size and with triple walls. Even in this one, which
is comparatively well preserved, the original height is uncertain,
though the ruin still stands about fifteen feet high.
The vast quantity of debris about some of them indicates that they were
of no insignificant height, and their perfect symmetry of form, the
careful finish of the masonry, the large dimensions and great solidity,
made them the most imposing architectural works of that ancient people.
I find no reason to doubt that they were their temples, and the
presumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The
occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of
buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers
to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.
Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round
watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest
pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur
with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the life
of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the years,
perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red men
from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier families
at the hands of the same blood-thirsty savages is heart-rending. What
was it to those who saw year by year their whole race's life withering
away, crushed by those wild tribes?
Near the lower end of the canyon stands one of the most perfect of these
towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It
was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have
been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are
prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque
and as full of mystery as the round towers of Ireland....
In the Montezuma Canyon, just beyond the Colorado State border, there are
some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great size.
One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary mesa, is
constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the prehistoric masonry
of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line of
fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and
are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones
standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the
lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the
hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there
is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much
later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.
All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of
the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written
record of their existence, except their own rude picture-writing,
cut or painted on the canyon walls, and it is not likely that those
hieroglyphics will ever be deciphered. But much may be inferred from
their evident kinship to the Moquis of our time; and the resemblance of
the ancient architecture and ceramics to the arts as they are still
practised in the degenerate pueblos of Arizona gives us many intimations
in regard to the habits of the Cliff-dwellers.
[Illustration: GRAND CANON, ARIZONA
IN THE COUNTRY OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS]
It was centuries ago--how long a time no one will ever know--when that
old race was strong and numerous, filling the great region from the
Rio Grande to the Colorado of the West, and from the San Juan
Mountains far down into Northern Mexico. They must have numbered many
hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. It is not probable that they
were combined under one government, or that they were even closely
leagued together, but that they were essentially one in blood and
language is strongly indicated by the similarity of their remains.
That they were sympathetic in a common hostility to the dangerous
savage tribes about them can hardly be doubted. They were of peaceful
habits and lived by agriculture, having under cultivation many
thousands of acres in the rich river-bottoms, which they knew well how
to irrigate from streams swollen in summer by the melting snows of the
high mountain-ranges. We read of their dry canals in Arizona, so deep
that a mounted horseman can hide in them. We know that they raised
crops of corn and beans, and in the south cotton, which they skilfully
wove. That they had commercial dealing across their whole country
is shown by the quantity of shell-ornaments brought from the Pacific
coast, which are found in their Colorado dwellings. They did not
understand the working of metals, but their implements of stone are of
most excellent workmanship. Their weapons indicate the practice of
hunting, and while the race was still numerous their forts and their
sharp obsidian arrows made easy their resistance to the wandering
savage hordes.
I believe that no instance can be cited of a people still in their Stone
Age who have surpassed that old race in the mason's art: indeed, I doubt
if any such people has even approached their skill in that respect. The
difficulty of constructing a great work of well-squared, hammer-dressed
stones is enormously increased if the masons must work only with stone
implements. Imagine the infinite, toilsome patience of a people who in
such a way could rear the ancient Pueblo Bonito of New Mexico, five
hundred and forty feet long, three hundred and fourteen feet wide, and
four stories high! In one wall of a neighboring building of stone less
carefully dressed it is estimated that there were originally no less
than thirty million pieces, which were transported, fashioned, and laid
by men without a beast of burden or a trowel, chisel, or hammer of
metal....
At the time of the Spanish conquest the Pueblo tribes were worshippers
of the sun and fire, like all the races of this continent which were
above barbarism. To-day, even in those pueblos where a corrupted form of
the Roman faith is accepted, there are traces of the old sun-worship
mingled with it, and in all pueblos there are large circular rooms,
called estufas, reserved for councils and for worship. The invariable
appearance of estufas among the ruined towns, and even on the ledges of
the cliffs, shows what sacredness was attached to the circular room,
which, perhaps, was symbolic of the sun's orb: it indicates a unity of
religious faith between the ancients and moderns.
LAKE TAHOE AND THE BIG TREES.
A. H. TEVIS.
[To Rev. A. H. Tevis, author of "Beyond the Sierras; or,
Observations on the Pacific Coast," we owe the following
description of a most charming example of American lake
scenery, one of the varied and striking regions of beauty which
California offers to the tourist.]
Of the many curiosities that nature has scattered over the length and
breadth of this coast, Lake Tahoe is one of the most charming.
This is a land of wonders, certainly of curiosities. Providence has made
this vast area, between the Rocky Mountains and the sea, his chief
receptacle of the wealth of the country. And what folly to travel in
foreign countries to see the sights until you have at least seen some of
the wonders and treasures of our own great Commonwealth! You can spend
your life in exploring these various wonders, and then not find an
end,--petrified forests; lost rivers, whose _termini_ no one knows, and
of whose source there is great doubt; brackish lakes, whose waters are
worse than the Dead Sea, and in which no living thing can exist;
bubbling, hissing, thundering geysers, whose awfulness impresses the
hardest heart; roaring cataracts, that with a band of silver seem to
bind together earth and sky; boiling springs, hither and yon in almost
countless profusion, that send their breath of steam as through the
throats of some great furnace from Vulcan's forge; geographical and
topographical features that are marvellous in themselves; the big trees,
whose magnitude is a wonder, and whose age links the present almost to
the days of Solomon; Yosemite, unlike anything of the kind in the known
world, whose sublimity is beyond description; and charming, silvery,
unique Tahoe, or Pearl of the Sierras.
There is no patent on the name, hence we have chosen to christen it
thus. And who will say it is a misnomer that has seen its grandeur and
enjoyed the beauty of its surroundings? Its name belongs to the Indian
tongue, and signifies _clear water_.