. Some strange corners of our country; the wonderland of the Southwest . ture has crowded her curiositiesinto that strangest and most forbidding of mu-seums, that they may not be too easily hundred miles north of the Petrified Forest, and weUinto the edge of the Arizona desert, are the seven strangeand seldom visited Pueblo cities of Moqui. They all havewildly unpronounceable names: Hualpi, Si-chom-ivi, Shim-o-pavi, Shi-paui-luvi, Oraibe, and Mishongop-avi; and all arebuilt on the summits of almost inaccessible mesas—islandsof solid rock, whose generally perpendicular cM-walls risehigh
. Some strange corners of our country; the wonderland of the Southwest . ture has crowded her curiositiesinto that strangest and most forbidding of mu-seums, that they may not be too easily hundred miles north of the Petrified Forest, and weUinto the edge of the Arizona desert, are the seven strangeand seldom visited Pueblo cities of Moqui. They all havewildly unpronounceable names: Hualpi, Si-chom-ivi, Shim-o-pavi, Shi-paui-luvi, Oraibe, and Mishongop-avi; and all arebuilt on the summits of almost inaccessible mesas—islandsof solid rock, whose generally perpendicular cM-walls risehigh from the surrounding plain. They are very remarka-ble towns in appearance, set upon dizzy sites, with quaintterraced houses of abode, .and queer little corrals for the ani-mals in nooks and angles of the cliff, and giving far outlookacross the browns and yellows, and the spectral peaks of thatweird plain. But they look not half so remarkable as theyare. The most remote from civilization of all the Pueblos,the least affected by the Spanish influence which so wonder-. ?J<•J D o 0. < D THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE. 45 fully ruled over tlie euornious area of tlie southwest, andpractically untouched by the later Saxon influence, the In-dians of the Moqui towns retain ahnost entii^ely their wonder-ful customs of before the conquest. They number eighteenhundred souls. Theii* languages are different from those ofany other of the Pueblos ;* and their mode of life—though toa hasty glance the same—is in many ways unlike that oftheir brethren in New Mexico. They are the best weaversin America, except the once remarkable but now less skilfulNavajos; and their manias (the characteristic black woolendiesses of Pueblo women) and dancing-gii^dles are so famousthat the Indians of the Rio Grande valley often travel threehundred miles or more, on foot or on deliberate burros,simply to trade for the long-wearing products of the rude,home-made looms of Moqui. The Moquis also make valu-able a
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