Show THE OLD SETTLER I 1 by albert R lyman it is related that thai marco polo got I 1 the spirit of wandering and leaving i his native venice he went to constantinople crossed the gobi desert to and explored cathay which i we call china also he sailed to the east indias andias and returned with a thrilling account if he had gone thirty years earlier land and taken passage on an airliner to what is now white mesa landing where blanding was to be bupt bui t seven centuries in the future he would have told a story something like this we landed in a cornfield which proved to be one of many amae fields the people fled terrified in every director dir ecton but later the they y ventured around us the had copper colored skin straight coarse hair and black eyes they wore a sort of tunic woven of coarse fibre fabre and they wore sandals ot of the same material we could see their homes on the hilltops in every direction but right near us on the north wet stood a great stone house three stories high and covering se several veriLl acres the multitude from this castle for it seemed to be a castle came forth like a swarm of ants to look us and our curious craft over and behind them came an important ruler surrounded by a sort of bodyguard when we went back with t them hem as their guests we learned that this lord of the castle was called a we could see other foohs castles in the east and south they had flat roofs and some had inner courts each besides governing the people of his castle and and the farms around it governed the people for several miles around and was himself answerable to a more mighty ruler who lived in a big castle across several gulches to the northeast sandal patted pathways ran be tween their little fields and across the country in every direction they had no beasts of burden but swift messengers ran between the foohs castles and to the big chief in the north east most of their homes were of stone but man many y consisted of cedar logs upright and plastered with mud pools and ditches of water glistened in their fields from recent rains and among their plants we saw potatoes corn beans squash gourds geurds and tobacco we saw no fruit trees but many bushes loaded with black currants among the best gardens we found cotton plants every home had its own grist mill and every home its special pool of clear water boys played bone flutes while they guarded nocks flocks of turkeys on the hills and dwoinen women fashioned dishes of day clay to be burned into pottery from the highest of the three roofs of the castle to which the corpulent old foohs invited us he kindled a signal smoke also he sent swift runners in tour four directions and people came in throngs from across the gulch to the west and from all around the mesa where we landed must have had a population of their people lived on other mesas to the east and some to the west but the country to the west was alive with a robbing tribe who preyed on the crops of the plain dwellers and rid among the cliffs |