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Show The Cliff Dwellers. H A scientist in the east who has visited south- eastern Utah and western Colorado and examined H the caves "of the cliff dwellers expresses the be- lief that at the time those caves were put in use M they were near tho surface of the ground; that H since then through the ages the soil has been eroded away. H . Mr. Harry Culmer, who visited that region H last year, made a thorough investigation of that H and sees no evidences of any such change. He H does not believe that the so-called cliff dwellers H evor dwelt In those cliffs. His theory is that they H lived on the plain below; that the so-called cliff H dwellings were used merely for two purposes. H One was as sepulchres for their dead, the other H for storehouses "whore they cached provisions, and H where, in the larger ones, they retired in case of H siege. Where the mummies are found the caves B are so low that a person cannot sit upright in H them. They laid their dead there, Mr. Culmer H thinks, and then nearly filled the opening with H sticks and come. The openings are natural H caves, as tho people of that day had no means of H I excavating, for not one metal Instrument lias ever i been found. It Is quite possible that they were f the original settlers on this continent, that as they progressed southward into Mexico they finally discovered the use of metals. Mr. Culmer places their age at about the time of the last glacial period, which the scientists make sixty thousand years ago. Evidently they were as primitive as the men of the stone age, perhaps more so. Still, there are traces found of weaving, exquisite in workmanship and marvelous marvel-ous in the material used. Mr. Culmer has a bundle bun-dle of sticks tied together with threads as fine as any spjool thread of modern times. The chances are they made tho first Navajo blankets. Mr. Culmer calls attention to a great injustice which is being done by expeditions that' go to that region every year and loot those caves, gathering collections which they take to the east and sell for fabulous prices. He thinks the United States or the state of Utah ought to interpose and stop those raids, because they are taking away what, if left alone, one hundred years from now will be of inestimable value to tho state. There is no romance in their work. These plunderers are simply looting those old caves for plunder to sell to tho curious men and women of the east, it is on government land, but wo think the state could interpose to stop the larceny. It would not be much for the state to appoint an agent and pay him a little salary to guard those possessions. Mr. Culmer's idea is that one hundred years hence tho people of this state will be given credit for those raids and wo will be marked down as barbarians. bar-barians. The more that region is investigated the more wonderful it seems. Imagination itself grows weary in trying to fancy when that work was done, vho those people were, and to trace a connecting con-necting link between those creatures and modern men. They w.ere a powerful race. Some' of the mummies found are over six feet in length. They were evidently surrounded by fighting trlbe3, for in one cave Mr. Culmer found a battle axe made out of granite which had been put in a crevice in the wall of rock, and which was as fresh when he picked it up, apparently, as it was when it was left there at a time so remote that men cannot, whil9 stating the fact, realize the time any more than they can realize the distance to Slrius. We suggest sug-gest to the legislature that they provide some means to protect those dwellings. Mr. Culmer found a map inscribed on the rocks which was very nearly a perfect map of the county of San Juan( tracing the San Juan river up and the Colorado river down, and he believes it Is the description of some journey made or some expedition,, expedi-tion,, and he believes the hieroglyphics on the rock around the cave dwellings are simply epitaphs telling the name and recounting the exploits of the great chiefs who, just as men do now, fought and worked and loved and hated and wore out their lives for the sake of having it pasted on the rocks that they were great men in their day, that they performed great deeds, and the story still remains for someone to read who by and by gets a key to the thing, although the-men themselves went back to dust so long ago that two thousand generations of men have lived since. |