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A scientific expedition, headed by Professor Libbey, of Princeton University, started early in July to explore a mesa or table-land of sandstone which rises out of the alkali plains, in the neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This mesa is seven hundred feet high.  Its top has never before been trodden by man, for it rises from the plain with perpendicular walls that are inaccessible to even the most experienced mountain-climbers.

The mesa is situated near the Indian village of Acoma, and is called by the natives the Enchanted Mesa.  They have a wonderful legend about it.

The rock is fifteen acres in extent and, according to their story, was once the dwelling-place of the Acoma tribe.  After a while, as the tribe increased, there was not room enough on the rock for their dwellings and their fields, so they made a way down the rock, and used to send their able-bodied men below to sow and reap, while the aged and the young did the housekeeping on top of the mesa.

The story goes on to say that once, when the young men were away in the fields, a terrible storm arose; the thunders raged and the winds blew, and when at last the storm subsided it was found that the rocky staircase by which the Acomas were used to go up and down had been entirely swept away.

The Indians ran round and round the rock, but everywhere they found the straight walls as we see them to-day.  It was impossible to climb them; they could not get up to the friends they had left behind, nor could the unfortunate people come down to them.

For days they tried every means to reach the top, but they could not do so.  They could see their friends peering over at them, but day by day the faces grew fewer and fewer, until at last all were gone.

Since then the mesa has been held sacred by the Acomas, and regarded by them as a city of the dead.

This legend has been so thoroughly believed that scientists have often discussed the possibility of scaling this rock for the sake of the wonderful remains that must be on the top.  Finally Professor Libbey determined to make the attempt.

He took with him a life-saving apparatus, of the kind that is used on the sea-coast for sending a line out to a wrecked vessel.  His plan was to throw the line over the rock, and then have himself hauled up in an arrangement of ropes, used by sailors for working over the side of ships, and called by them a boatswain’s chair.

The life-saving apparatus was tried, and proved to be most successful.  A rocket was sent up with the life-line attached, and on the second effort was shot clear over the rock.

The line thus thrown was a thin quarter-inch rope; to this a strong hawser was attached, and after infinite labor pulled across the mesa’s top.  The boatswain’s chair was then attached, and with the aid of a pair of strong horses, who pulled away at one end of the rope, the professor was hauled to the top of the rock.