Show description description OF A NEW mexican ruin by G H I 1 crosby editor carri it I 1 have explained to mr crosby about giving his letters sent me to you for the press and he be writes as follows you are re welcome to the pieces I 1 write ind and more than welcome as it teaches me to be a close observer so that I 1 can tell others you need not leave my school grounds to find an interesting ruin ruin for within willin one hundred yards of my school room once stood an aztec fort I 1 have always ascribed this to the zuni nation but upon more careful search I 1 find signs r which indicate that its inhabitants waged a war with a neighboring 0 boring tribe and were driven away from here upon a careful com latison between these ruins and zuni pueblos I 1 cud no resemblance the ruins in the valley here are arc all of forts and seem to be ruined about the same time portions of the standing walls walla have been torn away to furnish building stone and many port holes have leave been found I 1 should conclude that the three ruins tell of a war between two indian nations encill ending 0 in the destruction of one about years ago but that is almost guess work though it il was fully that long the spanish accounts of zuni and neighboring C country though quite exhaustive tell of no other tribe now let us view the ruins of the nearest fort it is about yards long and forty five wide being almost oval in form As soon as you climb across the ruins of the outer wall you find three excavations which no doubt once served as beds for cisterns in which w water ater was stored though r some think th they ey may have been wells here and there on the ruin bushes grow but from so little soil they are not large inside the walls for eighteen feet or thereabouts are the walls of the houses you can cali see where the partition walls have been I 1 found the rooms to have been from eight to fourteen feet wide 1 by y from ten to eighteen long only one building was in the center the rest seem to have utilized the fort wall as one wall of their house it lias has always been short of anything i ncy in the relic line nothing but pottery being V round around it fully or more interesting 0 was some euins in the canyon above ramah ruins no not ruins for most of the louses houses are arc still standing after afler a ride of twenty minutes wo we turned a point and I 1 beheld in a crevice which ran parallel with tile the ground what appeared to be several oblong holes there said my companion there they are sure cli ough a row of little rock houses with it a ledge of sand stone for a roof slid and another for a floor the smallest room was about five by eight feet while the largest was not less ill than an ten tell by sixteen feet the walls were quite smoothly plastered both outside and in while the floor lias has been made mad level by filling the lower part sloping hillside of the room with cement thus preventing tile the inconveniences arasin arising from a floor which naturally receda toward to IV ard tile the brow of tile the cliff A cross section of the rooms would lie be triangular tri annular so shaped by the overhanging hany cliff being lower at the back than in front I 1 found the hie prints of corn cobs in the wall plaster while the cobs have long since decayed several rocks lying around have been worn smooth by grinding corn between two of them the finger flints of the one who wb 0 put the mud between tile wall and cliff shows show S plain as if but done yesterday a although I 1 tile the walls have stood until tile the mud has become hard as brick tim the wood around is pine which is generally pitchy thus tile gummy smoke has left a carbon coat on tile the overhanging over hanging 0 W cliff which appears on first sight to be as a fresh as though tile the cliff dwellers live liers fire was scarcely ly extinct then if you dig diff through the dirt ou find the straw dry ai and id well preserved s e r v e d upon which this unknown tribe slept little shelves in the walls ire are quite common while most every room has bas a door to thc jhc addon lion ing room as well as one lea leading dinv 0 to the open air the doors being about live five feet feel high and quite narrow the larger rooms have one wi window lidow hough ta no signs 2 of poll holes can cali be round found having completed my ob ions I 1 found a few flint arrow spikes and we returned home hoine oh how bow I 1 wish the dumb rocks could talk and break the mysteries mis teries ries which hover bover over these ruins I 1 would chati that I 1 could erase the blinding veil 0 of time so that I 1 could coul d see these people and know who they were but as I 1 ponder the unis tery grows deeper and I 1 say sleet sleep in peace thou tho 1 great unknown I 1 have found a ledge of fossil bearing no rock th the c fossils are all of the m mollusk family and ore are quite interesting to me NEW MEXICO april 10 19 |