Show TEXTILE FIBER i- From Vice Consul General Joseph J. Rio de V are indigenous to Brazil and grow-wild in certain regions two well-known J of the rooms already They rise to a height of from five and one-Half to seven feet and are covered with roofs usually similar to those of the other buildings but the style of the roof and the form of the side avails differ somewhat in the different showing the influence of local conditions and of tribal customs and The inside of the wall is usually covered with a fine clay plaster up to a height of about three feet and often over the entire In some of the ruins one can easily trace three different coats of two of which have been added at later periods as the wall became old and A thin surface coating of gypsum has been added in a few that gave a white face to the At about three feet from the floor the wall is set back from one to two From that point to the top the wall usually takes the form of six with the same number of recesses between The recesses are from six to twenty-four inches deep and almost invariably walled up at the A few instances have been found where the back of a recess seemed to have been formed by plastering a rather loose filling of stone with The buttresses carried the large beams that supported the roof and the recesses been explained as representing the four cardinal points of the globe and the zenith and The six recesses are characteristic of the circular kivas so far examined north of the San Juan and in some of those found south of that streamy but the older ones examined in the Sagi and Sagi ot canyons omit the recesses and one well built kiva of V the best type had a single recess extending around half the May not the recesses have been features of and as convenient resting places for the paraphernalia used in the sacred rites connected with the v The most constant and striking features of the kiva are the the fire the fire and the sacred passage from behind the fire screen through the wall and connecting with a shaft that rises outside the wall to the air Space will not permit a discussion of the variations in construction and the probable purpose of these important The signifies the sacred place through which man proceeded from the and the passage and are the sacred way by which he passed to the higher plane of the earth's surface into the full light of the In one of the branches of canyon south of Navajo where good workable stone were not so were found well built houses of Here the foundations and sometimes the entire first story were of stone laid in an abundance of clay while the superstructures were of In some of these walls the clay had been mixed with grass and into large rectangular adobe brick before being built into the while in others the wall had been built up in horizontal sections by supporting the sides with flat stone and then filling in the trough so made with clay in which grass or willow twigs were laid for strengthening Entire rooms of this construction stand as solidly as when they were first From the construction of the rooms and from the materials of wood and yucca fibre and from the excellent pottery found inhabitants bestrewn w r j that about it is evident longed to the best period of development f these of adobe in the T The more extensive use m houses was due largely to the greater stone in this and the material fJ at hand to their the most available people adapted and tl mu Immediate The with straw concrete walls strengthened with long grass and s the elsewhere in bedded in the clay are a feature not found structures of this th rough h the the Scattered along the beds of the canyons and perched on the points ot small over the cliffs that extend out into these valleys and canyons or clustering around the heads of small side are found almost numberless ruins of ancient pueblos or borne contained only one and two rooms and were the Ruin by Marsh of single while others contained hundreds of rooms and covered several acres of ground in their rambling Frequently a large building that has served as a fort or place of and perhaps was surrounded by many smaller structures grouped about as in the case of a large ruin near Marsh Pass in northern The main building was a rectangular ninety feet long and ten and half feet that evidently was two stories in Parts of the walls above the first story still stand and some of the timbers that supported the floor of second story are yet in All about are found the ruins of smaller structures and the ground is full of broken pieces of pottery of excellent manufacture in corrugated and in the smooth white ware decorated in black and the red ware decorated in black and Along the and its side canyons and some of the branches of Montezuma in canyon the southeastern part of San Juan are found the remains of rectangular and round towers that seem peculiar to that region They are usually grouped about the head of a side canyon in which are found one or more good The walls of some still species of trees which are of interest to commercial world because of their possibly ties as producers of cotton To those who know the cotton-growing industry jt exists in the United States and in other the idea of cotton being produced from trees presents a decided Not the least remarkable about these trees is their occurrence in precisely those regions where it has seemed to be impossible or at least difficult to grow ordinary No other country in the world possesses so large area of land which may be utilized for the growing of cotton as does and that in other areas it is possible to cultivate trees for the production of cotton fibers must appeal to the textile-producing world as indi-cating that Brazil must be reckoned with as a future source of large quantities of the world's cotton The Tree One of these trees is called from its being after the swelled trunk which is its The tree grows 25 to 35 feet in tapering from the great bulge in the trunk to a very slender from which branches form about 12 feet above the The trunk is entirely covered with hard and sharp The pods in which the cotton grows are 5 to 8 inches long and 2 to 4 inches in The fiber is coarse and white and adheres closely to the which are somewhat smaller than It is a long and a strong and while too coarse for use in textiles of any degree of it would lend itself admirably to tie fabrication of cotton and a large variety of other The habitat of this tree is in central and southern and it grows to a lesser extent in the State of The uplands on which it seems to flourish are from to feet above sea there is a decided chill in the air during certain months of the Other Tree The other tree produces a much fine of a brownish exceedingly but not long enough to spin and eider The pods in grows are about 10 inches long and 1 inches in diameter before e the pod bursts and the ripe cotton comes ou the pod takes on a rotund shape 8 to inches in The fiber adheres loo ly to the most of which fall ou shaking and is so hg A fluffy that one- can blow almost the entire contents of- a pod free the in- or Occasionally this cotton is and when properly prepared it is as soft and downy as the and best showing no to mat and harden with T The inner bark of this cotton tree util- by the inhabitants for many It is a remarkably strong fiber and a strip one-half in width without any sustain a weight of 50 to The tree has as its habitat central Bahia and northern Minas being most abundant in latter and is being a name of Indian origin probably given to it because of its peculiar and characteristic The corrugations of the bark form diamond-shaped the inner parts of which have a and glossy Longevity Possible Both of the trees are hardy and long 75 to years being apparently a fair average for the period during which they bear cotton while the common cotton plant bears in many parts of Brazil for 15 to 25 years without any attention the world's source of cotton supply in the main limited to the United and in view of the reputed failures to develop the cotton-growing industry on a large scale hf India and it would seem that Brazil will within the next generation witness an extension of its cotton and when such a time comes its cotton-bearing trees will have their share of attention in this of the fiber-bearing trees described are filed for public reference with the Bureau of ten and twenty feet hundred miles northwest this near the Colorado m what is known to the cattlemen as the Beef Basin J Tower Ruins in Ruin is a series of similar They consist of ten groups of eight of which are situated on projecting points of a cedar ridge that runs along the southeast side and two on the first rise of ground on the northwest side of a depres- sion called Ruin In these pueblos are found rectangular and round the walls of which are now ten to sixteen feet Along the side walls of Montezuma canyon and its are numerous natural nearly all of which have been occupied in former but more striking still are the remains of groups of buildings found wherever the canyon widens sufficiently to afford fields of arable land along the One such little valley is a mile and a half long and three-quarters of a mile wide in its broadest Within this irregular stretch of bottom land are found the ruins of sixty-nine varying in size from four to two hundred With nearly every one of these can be traced the outlines of one or more kivas of the circular type sunken below the level upon which the main buildings Connected with the largest building were at least ten other and perhaps as one section of this structure has been carried away by the washing of the creek and the consequent caving in of the bank above which it Below this scattered over the points and slopes of cliffs that stand out into the two other quite extensive groups of In connection with these are the walls that have been formed by standing long slabs of stone on side by referred to by in the Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Near the heads of many small particularly along Alkali Ridge and Mustang are found numerous extensive for a primitive They seem to have been begun as a group of rooms built around three sides of a in the center of which the was Sometimes this court was extended and one or more kivas with a consequent extension of the groups of and again other rows of rooms were built along the back or side of the and a kiva laid court first an entirely separate built Thus the pueblo section by u generation after as the clans enlarged m flop family had numerous daughters to Among this the descent is through and other tribes at region who owns the the children and so ana a similar clan development through a female ancestor probably existed among these ancient The arrangement of the buildings and the presence of numerous kivas show a clan and the sinking of the kiva wholly or in part beneath the surface and the presence of the sipapu in the kiva floor indicate a worship of the earth mother and a tracing of descent through the maternal Many of these villages grew until they covered large areas of ground with structures that sometimes seem to have a plan and a pretense but more often grew as the fancy of the builder and the availability of the ground One such pueblo on Alkali about twenty-five miles south of was built in the general form of a capital letter E. It was feet long and feet wide in its widest and contained forty-one about ten miles near the head of Rustler's covered an area of more than four t The ruins of all these structures are now mere heaps of in which big cedars and aged sage brush are often found The surface stones are battered and worn into 1 rounded boulders by the beating of the storms and winds but when these are removed and the portions of the walls still standing the stone forming these are found usually quite well These ruins are undoubtedly very old and it is not a difficult matter in the larger ones to locate the oldest section and trace the growth of the The industry and skill of these people is shown not only in the extent and variety of their building but also in their They were a neolithic and no evidence has yet been brought to light that they had any acquaintance whatsoever with the The earlier culture of which we have spoken corresponds quite closely with that of the neolithic people in and the of that region bear a strong resemblance in form to the earlier kivas of the Cliff |