"Where, then, did the inhabitants get the water necessary for their subsistence? There are two arroyos between the ruins and the Mesa Jumanes, within a mile of the town, having well-defined watercourses, which might have contained permanent water at the time that the town was inhabited. Even at the present time, the drainage from these arroyos furnishes water for a laguna some five miles below that lasts during about one half the year. Again, springs may have existed around the rise upon which the town is situated that, from natural causes, have become dry. "The phenomenon of the failures of water is no uncommon one in this region, as is evidenced by the numerous vents where the surrounding rocks show the action of running water. "A case directly supporting the assumption of the failure of the water is furnished at a place about thirty-five miles northerly from the Gran Quivira, known as 'La Cienega.' At this point a stream of water, furnished by two springs, and running to a distance of about a mile at all seasons of the year, which has never been known to be dry within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, has, within the last year, entirely disappeared; and even digging to a considerable depth in the bed of the late springs fails to find the stream, or the channel by which it has so mysteriously disappeared. "To those at all familiar with the cretaceous formation of the south-eastern portion of New Mexico, and who have seen the numerous rivers that flow hundreds of inches of water within a few yards of where they make their first appearance, and the total disappearance of these streams within a few miles, who have seen the water flowing in caves and subterraneous streams, and the fact that the whole country is cavernous, can easily imagine the possibility of a stream acting upon its cretaceous bed, and eventually wearing a channel, to connect with some immense cavern, and disappearing at once from the surface beyond all reach of human power. "To the south of the Gran Quivira, at a distance of about twenty miles, commences a _mal pais_, an immense bed of lava, sixty miles in length from north to south, and covering an area of five hundred square miles. To the south-west of this commences a salt marsh, which has an area of fifty square miles, and which is fed entirely by subterranean streams from the Sacramento and White Mountains, receiving without doubt by the same means the drainage of this plain for a hundred miles to the north. The above facts are, I think, sufficient to account for the absence of water at the present time near Gran Quivira.