A vast plain surrounds Ácoma, and the far horizon to the south is ringed with barrier walls of forbidding strength. Natural fortresses they are, with weird castellated bastions and watch towers. Toward the north, rises the gracious blue Sierra de San Mateo,[13] an extinct volcano regarded with deep reverence by all these native people. Thence came their timber _vigas_ or whatever other wood might be needed by the pueblo, all to be brought by human labor across thirty miles of desert.[14] On the slopes of San Mateo, we are told, are the most holy and hidden places of prayer and ritual, which the uninitiated may never find or penetrate. Well-worn trails run from Laguna and Zuñi as well as from Ácoma to the summit, and I have been told by a resident of Albuquerque of an altar and prayer sticks found there in recent days. Leading from the top of the Crag to the plain below there are, according to Lummis,[15] seven trails. Of that number we identified six. We found one on the north, one on the northeast, one on the southwest, and three on the west. The seventh, which Lummis calls the “Split Trail,” we did not see. We more than suspect that there are, besides, trails to the south mesa. Although Hodge thinks there were always several trails, all difficult and more or less dangerous, the only one ordinarily accepted as existing before 1629 was that on the northwest side, called the “Ladder Trail.” It was formed by toe and finger holes cut in the solid rock and worn deeper by the moccasined feet of the dwellers on the summit. This is the trail that came to be known as the “Camino del Padre,” after Fray Juan Ramírez made his famous ascent to the rock in that year. Up such a staircase as this in the early days every ounce of adobe for their houses, and the wooden beams for their buildings, had to be brought on their backs by the patient dwellers seeking safety from the hostile roving tribes. Not far to the east of the Camino del Padre, the most often used of all the seven, is the dangerous and now abandoned north trail, where Zaldívar made his feint in the most audacious storming known to military history. The Indians call it either the “Runner’s Trail” or “Deadman’s Trail,” but they say it has not been in use for many years. It seems as if the trail described by the earliest explorers must be that at the northeast end of the pueblo, for the much-used toe-and-finger trail is neither long enough nor hazardous enough to correspond to their descriptions. One day when we were standing above the northeast trail, an Indian with a sense of humor called to us, when halfway up, asking for a rope to be let down, and declaring for quite a while that he could never arrive unassisted. Our host said, quite frankly, that he often went down that way, but never came up by it, because “It’s too hard work.” [Illustration: THE LADDER TRAIL _Bolton_]