The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days' journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population, lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi. To the grief of the invaders, they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization. They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton and produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found them declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane. In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people. On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their villages--rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large circular _estufas_, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the cañons are scattered in every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which give us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten people. And on commanding points, seen far away down the cañons or across the mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might signal to the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians.