A few miles south of San Francisco Peak there is an intermittent stream known as Walnut Creek. This stream runs in a deep gorge 600 to 800 feet below the general surface. The stream has cut its way through the limestone and through series of sandstones, and bold walls of rock are presented on either side. In some places the softer sandstones lying between the harder limestones and sandstones have yielded to weathering agencies, so that there are caves running along the face of the wall, sometimes for hundreds or thousands of feet, but not very deep. These natural shelves in the rock were utilized by an ancient tribe of Indians for their homes. They built stairways to the waters below and to the hunting grounds above, and lived in the caves. They walled the fronts of the caves with rock, which they covered with plaster, and divided them into compartments or rooms; and now many hundreds of these dwellings are found. Such is the cliff village of powell-canyons-18.jpg PYRAMID BUTTE NEAR FORT WINGATE. Walnut Canyon. In the ruins of these cliff houses mortars and pestles are found in great profusion, and when first discovered many articles of pottery were found, and still many potsherds are seen. The people were 42 CANYONS OF THE COLORADO. very skillful in the manufacture of stone implements, especially spears, knives, and arrows. East of San Francisco Peak there is another low volcanic cone, composed of ashes which have been slightly cemented by the processes of time, but which can be worked with great ease. On this cone another tribe of Indians made its village, and for the purpose they sunk shafts into the easily worked but partially consolidated ashes, and after penetrating from the surface three or four feet they enlarged the chambers so as to make them ten or twelve feet in diameter. In such a chamber they made a little fireplace, its chimney running up on one side of the powell-canyons-19.jpg ZUÑI CLIFFS. wellhole by which the chamber was entered. Often they excavated smaller chambers connected with the larger, so that sometimes two, three, four, or even five smaller connecting chambers are grouped about a large central room. The arts of these people resembled those of the people who dwelt in Walnut Canyon. One thing more is worthy of special notice. On the very top of the cone they cleared off a space for a courtyard, or assembly square, and about it they erected booths, and MESAS AND BUTTES. 43 within the square a space of ground was prepared with a smooth floor, on which they performed the ceremonies of their religion and danced to the gods in prayer and praise. Some twelve or fifteen miles farther east, in another volcanic cone, a rough crater is found, surrounded by piles of cinders and angular powell-canyons-20.jpg GREAT NECK NINE MILES SOUTH OF SALAZAR.