. Some strange corners of our country; the wonderland of the Southwest . t my goodIndian compadre* Jose Hilario Montoya, now governor ofthe pueblo of Cochiti, to guide you, you are apt to rememberit as the most interesting expedition of your life. The coun-try itself is well worth a long jom^ney to see, for it is oneof the wildest in North America. The enormous plateau issplit mth canons from the mountains to the deep-worn river;and the mesas w^hich separate them are long triangles whichbreak off in thousand-foot cliffs in the chasm of the RioGrande, their narrow points looking like stupendous
. Some strange corners of our country; the wonderland of the Southwest . t my goodIndian compadre* Jose Hilario Montoya, now governor ofthe pueblo of Cochiti, to guide you, you are apt to rememberit as the most interesting expedition of your life. The coun-try itself is well worth a long jom^ney to see, for it is oneof the wildest in North America. The enormous plateau issplit mth canons from the mountains to the deep-worn river;and the mesas w^hich separate them are long triangles whichbreak off in thousand-foot cliffs in the chasm of the RioGrande, their narrow points looking like stupendous col-umns, whence they get their Spanish name potreros. Thewhole area is hke the foot of some unspeakable giant withdozens of toes, set down beside the hoarse, gray river. The whole region for thousands of square miles—like themajority, indeed, of New Mexico—is volcanic. But here wesee less of the vast lava-flows so common in other parts ofthe territory. Instead, there is an unprecedented deposit offurther-consumed matter from the forgotten fire-mountains. * MUMMY CAVE AND VILLAGE, CANON DEL MUERTO, ARIZONA. THE NEW YORKPUBLIC LIBRARY A8T0R, LCNOX AND•CeN FOUNDATIONS, HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 117 When I vvas a boy in New England, I thought the ^^ floatingstone^^ with which I scrubbed my dingy fists was a greatcuriosity; but in the gorges of the Cochiti upland are cliffsone thousand five hundred feet high, and miles long, of solidpumice. There is enough stone that will float to take thestains from all the boy hands in the world for all time. In this noble and awesome wilderness several tribes ofPueblo Indians dwelt in prehistoric times. It probably didnot take them long to learn that in such a country of softcliff it was rather easier to dig ones house than to build it,even when the carpenter had no better tools than a sharpsplinter of volcanic glass. The volcanoes did some good,you see, in this land which they burned dry fbrever; for inthe same cliff they put the sof
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