After this meeting, the party passed more ruins of considerable villages, mostly built on shelves, and accessible only by ladders. Fragments of curiously-marked pottery were picked up, of which drawings are given. The walls, still of red sandstone, increased in the magnificence of their proportions, at intervals presenting _façades_ hundreds of feet in length, and three or four hundred in height, beautifully smooth and vertical. About eight miles up the cañon, a small rill, previously lost in the deep sand, reappeared above ground. At last, at nine and a half miles from the entrance, the horses of the Pueblo Indians who accompanied him not being strong enough to go farther, and the much talked-of _presidio_ or fort not appearing, Mr Simpson resolved to return to camp. The height of the walls, at the point where he turned back, he ascertained to be five hundred and two feet, and still increasing. The length of the cañon he conjectures--he does not mention on what grounds--to be about twenty-five miles. Its average width, as far as he ascended it, was two hundred yards. "Both in going up and returning through the cañon, groups of Navajos and single persons were seen by us, high above our heads, gazing upon us from its walls. A fellow upon horseback, relieved as he was sharply against the sky, and scanning us from his elevation, appeared particularly picturesque. Whenever we met them in the cañon, they were very friendly--the principal chief, Martinez, joining and accompanying us in our exploration, and the proprietors of the peach orchards bringing out blanket-loads of the fruit (at best but of ordinary quality) for distribution among the troops. I noticed the cross, the usual emblem of the Roman Catholic faith, stuck up but in one instance in the cañon, and this is the only one I have seen in the Navajo country."