Mesa Verde is what is called a three days’ park. One could easily spend three weeks or three months there with profit or delight, camping in its delicious forests and riding over its mountainsides. But in three days all that is to be seen of cliff dwellings and prehistoric ruins can be inspected without hurry, unless of course one is an archaeologist. Here are most elaborate ruins, carefully restored, whose many kivas indicate a prosperous and flourishing community. Long canyons, thickly wooded and enameled with wild-flowers are lined on both sides with these airy villages. A small museum of articles found in excavating, displayed in the main house, greatly aids the mere amateur. [Illustration: CLIFF-DWELLINGS. MESA VERDE PARK, COLORADO. Here are most elaborate ruins, carefully restored.] We were fortunate in having a guide who knew his park like a book. Forsaking routine paths and steps, he hoisted us up and down the paths,--mere niches they were,--worn in the solid wall by those agile Indians. It seems certain that at that time no cliff-mothers indulged in the embonpoint affected by so many of their descendants. An inch too much of girdle in the right,--or the wrong,--place, would have sent them hurtling down into the canyon, as they climbed those sheer walls. Being one of the oldest known cliff communities, Mesa Verde is much more carefully restored than those we saw in the Canyon de Chelley and in Segi Canyon. More accessible and compact than other ruins, Mesa Verde combines the historic,--or prehistoric,--interest with the needs of vacation seekers who wish a few luxuries with their cliff dwellings. Although the hotel is of the simplest sort, it is well run. Those who wish to camp may do so by obtaining a permit. Tent houses are provided as a compromise between camping and hotel life for those who want to feel they are roughing it, but prefer a floor and a mattress between them and the insect world.