There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so great a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the cañon of the Little Rio Mancos[1] in South-western Colorado. The stream rises in a spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp called Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open valley, it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound cañon which cuts for nearly thirty miles through a tableland called the Mesa Verde. The cañon is wide enough to permit the old inhabitants to plant their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either side to a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and grooved and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata and the projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities for building fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence. Therefore the whole length of the cañon is filled with ruins, and for fifteen miles beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the river meets the Rio San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the ancient occupation. The scenery of the cañon is wild and imposing in the highest degree. In the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or weather-stains to dull the brightness of the strata to the universal hoariness of moister climates: the vertical cliffs, standing above long slopes of débris, are colored with the brilliant tints of freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of green follows the course of the rivulet winding down through the cañon till it is lost to sight in the vista of crags. The utter silence and solitude of the wilderness reigns through the valley. It is not occupied by any savage tribe, and only a few white men within the last few years have passed through it and told of its wonders; and yet its whole length is but one series of houses and temples that were forsaken centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a more exciting tour of exploration than that which Mr. Jackson's party made on first entering this cañon in 1874.