The first necessity of life to the Pueblos, after security from their enemies was assured, was a sufficient water supply. No modern ideas of sanitation have penetrated this community, and only the wonderful quality of the air, so high and powerful in desiccation, can account for their escape from epidemic disease. After the dwellings, the most striking objects here are moderate-sized tanks placed at intervals along the streets, filled with water for household use. On asking the source of the water upon this arid and wind-beaten rock, one is told of two great natural reservoirs[12] on the northern side of the mesa from which the women bring upon their heads, in three-to five-gallon _tinajas_, all the water needed for every purpose. Toward the close of day a beautiful picture is made by women bearing aloft with perfect poise these great ollas, or water jars. The reservoirs are large, and so dry is the air at this great height that the water is always cool. I have been told of the children skating on them in March. The larger of the two on the northern side of the precipice we found emptied and scrubbed out, waiting for the longed-for rains to fill it afresh. To our surprise we found the grey rock was ruddy-hearted. The basin-floor was of a warm tone patterned by nature like a mosaic, with a design oddly suggestive of a colossal frog pinned out under a microscope. Lieutenant Simpson, in his famous report of 1850, scouts the idea that these reservoirs were sufficient for village use and quotes Lieutenant Abert, who three years earlier wrote of water holes near which his men encamped. “Between our camp and the city [Ácoma] there was some water that ran along the bed of the stream for a few yards when it disappeared beneath the sand. This furnished the inhabitants with drinking water.” It is true that, the night we spent at the foot of the Crag, we were supplied with water brought by our chauffeur and an Indian from a spring a mile or more distant. Not far below and a little east of the emptied reservoir was a pathetic attempt at a garden on a fairly level shelf of the rock, to which some soil had been brought from the far-down valley. Here were one good-sized peach tree and two tiny ones guarded by an ungainly scarecrow. Of any other green or growing thing there was no trace anywhere upon the northern mesa.