Part 5

We camped the evening of August 5 in the middle of the Upper Geyser Basin, in the midst of some of the grandest geysers in the world. Colonel Barlow and Captain Heap, of the United States Engineers, were camped on the opposite side of the Fire-Hole. Soon after reaching camp a tremendous rumbling was heard, shaking the ground in every direction, and soon a column of steam burst forth from a crater near the edge of the east side of the river. Following the steam, arose, by a succession of impulses, a volume of water, apparently six feet in diameter, to the height of two hundred feet, while the steam ascended a thousand feet or more. It would be difficult to describe the excitement which attended such a display. It is probable that if we could have remained in the valley several days, and become accustomed to all the preliminary warnings, the excitement would have ceased, and we could have admired calmly the marvellous ease and beauty with which this column of hot water was held up to that great height for the space of twenty minutes. After the display is over the water settles down in the basin several inches, and the temperature slowly falls to 150 deg.. We called this the "Grand Geyser," for its power seemed greater than any other of which we obtained any knowledge in the valley.

[After describing more particularly the peculiarities of the Grand Geyser and the smaller neighboring geysers, Dr. Hayden gives us an enthusiastic pen-picture of a beautiful type of springs.]

On the summit of the great mound is one of a class I have called central springs; it is located on the highest point of the mound on which this great group belongs; has a crater twenty feet in diameter, very nearly quiescent, slightly bubbling, or boils near the centre, with a thin, elegant rim projecting over the spring, with the water rising within a few inches of the top. The continual but very moderate overflow of this spring, uniformly on every side, builds up slowly a broad-based mound, layer by layer, one-eighth to one-sixteenth of an inch thick. Looking down into these springs, you seem to be gazing into fathomless depths, while the bright blue of the water is unequalled even by the sea. There are a number of these marvellous central springs, with projecting rims carved with an intricate delicacy which of itself is a marvel; and as one ascends the mound and looks down into the wonderfully clear depths, the vision is unique. The great beauty of the prismatic colors depends much on the sunlight, but about the middle of the day, when the bright rays descend nearly vertically, and a slight breeze just makes a ripple on the surface, the colors exceed comparison; when the surface is calm there is one vast chaos of colors, dancing, as it were, like the colors of a kaleidoscope.

As seen through this marvellous play of colors, the decorations on the sides of the basin are lighted up with a wild, weird beauty which wafts one at once into the land of enchantment; all the brilliant feats of fairies and genii in the "Arabian Nights" entertainments are forgotten in the actual presence of such marvellous beauty; life becomes a privilege and a blessing after one has seen and thoroughly felt these incomparable types of nature's cunning skill....

Our search for new wonders leading us across the Fire-Hole River, we ascended a gently incrusted slope, and came suddenly upon a large oval aperture with scalloped edges, the diameters of which were eighteen and twenty-five feet, the sides corrugated and covered with a grayish-white silicious deposit, which was distinctly visible at the depth of a hundred feet below the surface. No water could be discovered, but we could distinctly hear it gurgling and boiling at a great distance below. Suddenly it began to rise, boiling and spluttering, and sending out huge masses of steam, causing a general stampede of our company, driving us to some distance from our point of observation. When within about forty feet of the surface it became stationary, and we returned to look down upon it. It was foaming and surging at a terrible rate, occasionally emitting small jets of hot water nearly to the mouth of the orifice.

All at once it seemed seized with a fearful spasm, and rose with 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.