A short distance farther toward the north occur a group of three more kivas. These are on the very brink of the mesa, and have been built in recesses in the crowning ledge of sandstone of such size that they could conveniently be walled up on the outside, the outer surface of rude walls being continuous with the precipitous rock face of the mesa. The positions of all these ceremonial chambers seem to correspond with exceptionally rough and broken portions of the mesa top, showing that their location in relation to the dwelling clusters was due largely to accident and does not possess the significance that position does in many ancient pueblos built on level and unencumbered sites, where the adjustment was not controlled by the character of the surface. The Walpi promontory is so abrupt and difficult of access that there is no trail by which horses can be brought to the village without passing through Hano and Sichumovi, traversing the whole length of the mesa tongue, and crossing a rough break or depression in the mesa summit close to the village. Several foot trails give access to the village, partly over the nearly perpendicular faces of rock. All of these have required to be artificially improved in order to render them practicable. Plate XXV, from a photograph, illustrates one of these trails, which, a portion of the way, leads up between a huge detached slab of sandstone and the face of the mesa. It will be seen that the trail at this point consists to a large extent of stone steps that have been built in. At the top of the flight of steps where the trail to the mesa summit turns to the right the solid sandstone has been pecked out so as to furnish a series of footholes, or steps, with no projection or hold of any kind alongside. There are several trails on the west side of the mesa leading down both from Walpi and Sichúmovi to a spring below, which are quite as abrupt as the example illustrated. All the water used in these villages, except such as is caught during showers in the basin-like water pockets of the mesa top, is laboriously brought up these trails in large earthenware canteens slung over the backs of the women. Supplies of every kind, provisions, harvested crops, fuel, etc., are brought up these steep trails, and often from a distance of several miles, yet these conservative people tenaciously cling to the inconvenient situation selected by their fathers long after the necessity for so doing has passed away. At present no argument of convenience or comfort seems sufficient to induce them to abandon their homes on the rocky heights and build near the water supply and the fields on which they depend for subsistence.