The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona | Page 4

the descriptions of ruins are too general to be of much value to the student.
[Footnote 4: Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., 1886, No. 4; Ancient Habitations of the Southwest, by James Stevenson.]
[Footnote 5: Century Magazine, October, 1890, vol. XL, No. 6, p. 806 et seq.]
In recent years several publications have appeared which, while not bearing directly on the De Chelly ruins, are of great interest, as they treat of analogous remains--the cliff ruins of the Mancos canyon and the Mesa Verde. These ruins were discovered in 1874 by W.?H. Jackson and were visited and described in 1875 by W.?H. Holmes,[6] both of the Hayden Survey. This region was roamed over by bands of renegade Ute and Navaho, who were constantly making trouble, and for fifteen years was apparently not visited by whites. Recent exploration appears to have been inaugurated by Mr F.?H. Chapin, who spent two summers in the Mesa Verde country. Subsequently he published the results of some of his observations in a handsome little volume.[7] In 1891 Dr W.?R. Birdsall made a flying trip to this region and published an account[8] of the ruins he saw the same year. At the time of this visit a more elaborate exploration was being carried on by the late G.?Nordenski?ld, who made some excavations and obtained much valuable data which formed the basis of a book published in 1893.[9] This is the most important treatise on the cliff ruins that has ever been published, and the illustrations can only be characterized as magnificent. All of these works, and especially the last named, are of great value to the student of the cliff ruins wherever located, or of pueblo architecture.
[Footnote 6: U.S. Geol. Survey, F.?V. Hayden in charge; 10th Ann. Rept. (for 1876), Washington, 1878.]
[Footnote 7: The Land of the Cliff Dwellers, by Frederick H. Chapin; Boston, 1892.]
[Footnote 8: Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., vol. XXIII, No. 4, 1891; The Cliff Dwellings of the Ca?ons of the Mesa Verde.]
[Footnote 9: The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, by G.?Nordenski?ld; Stockholm and Chicago, 1894.]
GEOGRAPHY
The ancient pueblo culture was so intimately connected with and dependent on the character of the country where its remains are found that some idea of this country is necessary to understand it. The limits of the region are closely coincident with the boundaries of the plateau country except on the south, so much so that a map of the latter,[10] slightly extended around its margin, will serve to show the former. The area of the ancient pueblo region may be 150,000 square miles; that of the plateau country, approximately, 130,000.
[Footnote 10: See Major C.?E. Dutton's map of the plateau country in 6th Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. Survey, pl.?xi. His report on "Mount Taylor and the Zu?i plateau," of which this map is a part, presents a vivid picture of the plateau country, and his descriptions are so clear and expressive that any attempt to better them must result in failure. The statement of the geologic and topographic features which is incorporated herein is derived directly from Major Dutton's description, much of it being taken bodily.]
The plateau country is not a smooth and level region, as its name might imply; it is extremely rugged, and the topographic obstacles to travel are greater than in many wild mountain regions. It is a country of cliffs and canyons, often of considerable magnitude and forming a bar to extended progress in any direction. The surface is generally smooth or slightly undulating and apparently level, but it is composed of a series of platforms or mesas, which are seldom of great extent and generally terminate at the brink of a wall, often of huge dimensions. There are mesas everywhere; it is the mesa country.
Although the strata appear to be horizontal, they are slightly tilted. The inclination, although slight, is remarkably persistent, and the thickness of the strata remains almost constant. The beds, therefore, extend from very high altitudes to very low ones, and often the formation which is exposed to view at the summit of an incline is lost to view after a few miles, being covered by some later formation, which in turn is covered by a still later one. Each formation thus appears as a terrace, bounded on one side by a descending cliff carved out of the edges of its own strata and on the other by an ascending cliff carved out of the strata which overlie it. This is the more common form, although isolated mesas, bits of tableland completely engirdled by cliffs, are but little less common.
The courses of the margins of the mesas are not regular. The cliffs sometimes maintain an average trend through great distances, but in detail their courses are extremely crooked; they wind in and out, forming alternate alcoves and promontories in the wall, and frequently they