One of the first cliff houses discovered by the explorers is a most interesting structure, the position of which, over six hundred feet from the bottom of the cañon in a niche of the wall, furnishes a significant commentary on the straits to which this sorely-pressed people were driven by their enemies. Five hundred feet of the ascent to this aërial dwelling was comparatively easy, but a hundred feet of almost perpendicular wall confronted the party, up which they could never have climbed but for the fact that they found a series of steps cut in the face of the rock leading up to the ledge upon which the house was built. [Illustration: Cliff-House in the Cañon of the Mancos.] This ledge was ten feet wide by twenty feet in length, with a a vertical space between it and the overhanging rock of fifteen feet. The house occupied only half this space, the remainder having been used as an esplanade, and once was inclosed by a balustrade resting on abutments, built partly upon the sloping face of the precipice below. The house was but twelve feet high and two-storied. Though the walls did not reach up to the rock above, it is uncertain whether it ever had any other roof. The ground plan showed a front room of six by nine feet in dimensions, in the rear of which were two smaller rooms, each measuring five by seven feet. The left-hand room projected along the cliff, beyond the front room, in the form of an L. The rock of the cliff served as the rear wall of the house. The cedar beams upon which the upper floor had rested had nearly all disappeared. The door opening on the esplanade was but twenty by thirty inches in size, while a window in the same story was but twelve inches square. A window in the upper story, which commands an extended view down the cañon, corresponded in dimensions and position with the door below. The lintels of the window were small straight cedar sticks laid close together, upon which the stones rested. Opposite this window was another and smaller one, opening into a semicircular cistern, formed by a wall inclosing the angle formed by the side wall of the house against the rock, and holding about two and a half hogsheads. The bottom of the reservoir was reached by descending on a series of cedar pegs about one foot apart, and leading downward from the window. The workmanship of the structure was of a superior order; the perpendiculars were true ones and the angles carefully squared. The mortar used was of a grayish white color, very compact and adhesive. Some little taste was evinced by the occupants of this human swallow’s nest. The front rooms were plastered smoothly with a thin layer of firm adobe cement, colored a deep maroon, while a white band, eight inches wide, had been painted around the room at both floor and ceiling. An examination of the immediate vicinity revealed the ruins of half a dozen similar dwellings in the ledges of the cliffs, some of them occupying positions