I had but a moment in which to view the impressive scene.  Scarcely had the head of our column entered this natural prison when it was greeted with wild shouts of triumph, immediately succeeded by shrieks of distress, while there streamed forward to meet us a tumultuous band of savages, a large proportion of whom were women and children.  The children were absolutely nude and peculiarly white of skin, while the former wore rude skirts of coarsely woven cloth fastened about the waist, their long hair in many instances trailing upon the ground, yielding them a wildness of aspect beyond description; yet withal they were not uncomely of features.  These newcomers thronged about us with scowling faces, and, when sternly forced back by the lowered weapons of the guard, either joined the procession, or else trooped alongside, yelling and jeering.

Pressed forward, although by now so utterly spent I could barely stagger rapidly enough to escape those pitiless thrusts, I mechanically noted enough of our surroundings to understand that we traversed ground which had been cultivated; that low fences, here and there encountered, divided the land into small sections, even as in more civilized regions farmers protect their fields.  What their crops may have been I could not determine, the season of harvest being already past, yet I distinguished what I supposed must be evidences of garden culture, observing also a considerable ditch, certainly four feet in width, filled with clear running water, which seemed to encircle the entire basin, the deeper green of vegetation marking its course close up against the farther rock wall.

The view directly in advance was at first obscured by the leaping figures of the exultant savages leading the way, whooping with excitement, and wildly brandishing their war-clubs.  These at length fell back along either side, our guards hurrying us across the ditch, spanned by the great trunk of a tree, and thus on into the village.  This town resembled no other encampment of savages on which my eyes had ever looked.  I saw a wide open space, a blackened stake set in the middle of it, the ground bare of vegetation, and tramped hard as if by countless feet.  Beyond, circling this plaza upon two sides, were several rows of houses, all facing the same direction.  It reminded me of pictures I had seen of Hebrew camps in my father’s great Bible, only the houses were built of sun-dried clay, such as peons use in the far Southwest on the Brazos, square in shape, of but a single story, having dome-shaped roofs, heavily thatched with cane.  They were windowless, with one narrow opening for a door, protected by a heavy matting of grass.  Behind these, perhaps a hundred yards or more, and within a short distance of the steep cliffs bounding the upper extremity of the valley, there arose from the surface of the plain two immense rounded mounds of earth, each fully a hundred paces wide at its base, sloping sharply upward.  Considerable