now standing, others are found of a more ancient city, whose walls were six feet thick, which perished either of age or by the hand of the destroyer, before the present was begun. The ascent to the ruin is a winding and difficult path, guarded with stone battlements at different points. At a sacred spring near Zuñi, Whipple found vases standing inverted upon an adobe wall. “Many of these were white, well-proportioned, and of elegant forms. Upon their inner and outward surfaces they were curiously painted to represent frogs, tadpoles, tortoises, butterflies, and rattlesnakes.” The tufted snakes on one of the vases are pronounced almost unique in America.[470] Twelve miles above Zuñi, at Ojo del Pescado, four or five ruined towns are found, but so badly decayed as to furnish little clue to their plan. Two of them, however, are constructed elliptically around a spring, and present a circumference of about 800 to 1000 feet. Two-thirds of a mile down the river, ruined pueblos in a fair state of preservation, with two stories standing, are described as covering an area of 150 by 200 yards. At the time of Möllhausen’s visit, the roofs and fire-places were in quite good condition.[471] A square estufa, still under roof, and numerous rock inscriptions, were observed. In this instance we are furnished with abundant evidence that the destruction of this people never was a wholesale one, but that gradually they are succumbing to their unpropitious surroundings—a land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin—the Apaches. One more locality in this region merits attention. Eighteen miles south-east of the sources of the Zuñi River, stands a sandstone rock three hundred feet high, which at a distance resembles a Moorish fortress. The Spaniards named it El Moro. It is also known as “Inscription Rock,” because of the Spanish and Indian inscriptions which cover its smooth face. Simpson has copied some of them, which is quite fortunate, since later explorers have found many of them almost effaced. The ruins of two buildings are found on the summit, which is reached by a difficult path. The large group is in the form of a rectangle, measuring 307 by 206 feet. The walls, faced with sandstone blocks, remain standing to the height of six and eight feet. The other group is separated from the first by a deep ravine, and is found upon the very brink of the outer precipice. A circular estufa thirty-one feet in diameter was also noticed. Cedar timbers were found in the walls, and broken pottery in abundance.[472] About one hundred miles in a north north-easterly direction from Zuñi, in longitude 108° and latitude 36°, the most remarkable of the pueblo ruins are situated. These are on the north bank of the Chaco River, a tributary of the Rio San Juan, a stream the affluents of which are noted for a greater number of pueblo and cliff-dwellers’ ruins than are found elsewhere.