The Colorado Chiquito and its tributaries flows through the very heart of the Pueblo country. One hundred miles above its junction with the Rio Colorado, Whipple, Sitgreaves and others, found numerous ruins, crowning nearly every prominent point in the valley. The pottery of the region is unlike that usually met with, in that it is ornamented with impressions and raised work, instead of being painted.[465] Forty miles farther up the river colossal ruins were discovered standing on the summit of a sandstone bluff. The walls, such as remained standing, were ten feet thick, while the building measured 360 feet in length by 120 in width.[466] With the exception of the remains of stone-houses, at the junction of the Rio Puerco with the Colorado Chiquito, the only aboriginal remains reported are pottery, scattered arrow-heads and numerous rock inscriptions. The next tributary of the Colorado Chiquito—the Zuñi River—is celebrated because of its ancient and modern Pueblo structures. For fifty miles from the mouth of the Zuñi, the antiquarian who could, might read the history of this ancient people, spread out upon the imperishable cliffs—the parchment of Nature’s children. Within eight miles of the inhabited Pueblo towns, numerous ruins are encountered.[467] Here, within a few miles, the almost mythical “seven cities of Cibola,” described by Coronado in 1540, and by Marco de Niça the year previous, are demonstrated to have been situated.[468] Zuñi itself is the Granada of the devoted and romantic conquerors. In the centre of a plain upon a commanding eminence, stands the inhabited Pueblo of Zuñi. Its frontage is upon the river of the same name, while but a short distance in the background, the mesa terminates in tall cliffs of metamorphic rock several hundred feet high. The town is built in blocks, with terrace-shaped houses, usually three stories high, in which the lower stories do service as the platform for those immediately following them. Access is obtained by means of ladders reaching to the roof or terrace, formed upon the first story of each of the houses. The town is very compactly built, many of the streets passing under the upper stories of houses. The whole is divided into four squares, and the houses in each are continuously joined together. The building material employed is stone, plastered with mud.[469] A little more than two miles south-east of Zuñi, the ancient ruined Pueblo of the same name is situated on an elevated mesa of a mile in width, the precipitous descent from which, upon all sides, measures a thousand feet. The ruins of old Zuñi are surrounded with a growth of cedars, and cover several acres of ground. The walls, constructed of small sandstone blocks laid in mud-mortar, are only eighteen inches thick and are sadly dilapidated from age, only twelve feet marking their highest point of present elevation. Still, there is a deeper mystery about this antiquated ruin, for beneath the walls