The valley of the Rio Grande River was occupied by a number of Pueblo tribes, and there are at present eight inhabited pueblos along this river, in New Mexico, and one in Texas. The region around Bernalillo was a prosperous section. At intervals, up and down the river, and along its tributaries, we can still trace low crumbling ruins, evidence of an old pueblo. If the statements of the Spanish writers are to be believed, the number of inhabited towns, at the time of the conquest, was at least ten times that now existing. The population could never have exceeded forty thousand. At present it contains about nine thousand. Still making all allowance for Spanish exaggeration, we are convinced that it was a thickly populated country at the time of the conquest. One of the most interesting pueblos in New Mexico is Jemez, on a river of that name, sixty miles west of Santa Fe. We speak of it here because it is the center of a most interesting group of ruins. Like the pueblo of Zuñi, it is a remnant only of a prosperous people. The reports of Coronado’s expedition frequently mention Jemez, though it may be doubtful whether they refer to the pueblo of that name now, or to one of the numerous ruined ones in the immediate vicinity. Jemez is a prosperous pueblo, having fine fields, large irrigating ditches, and extensive flocks of sheep. Simpson describes it in 1849 as follows: “The pueblo of Jemez is an Indian town of between four and five hundred inhabitants, . . . and is built upon two or three parallel streets, the houses being of adobe construction, and having second stories disposed retreatingly upon the first, to which access is had by means of ladders. . . . About the premises are probably a dozen acres covered with apricot and peach trees. . . . The Rio de Jemez, upon which the pave lies, is an affluent of the Rio Grande, varies from thirty to fifty feet in breadth, is of a rapid current. . . . Patches of good corn and wheat skirt it here and there along its banks, and the extent of cultivable land bordering it may be estimated at about a mile in breadth.”