but in modern coats and trousers, in moccasins and in New England boots and shoes.  Still they are at heart nearly the same Indians we found them in this story.  I could introduce you to Hayoue, to Zashue, to Okoya, and the rest.  If we strike the time well, you may witness the Koshare at their pranks, and in their full, very unprepossessing ceremonial toggery.  At Cochiti we take a guide, possibly Hayoue, and proceed northward in the direction of the Rito.

For a number of hours we have to follow the base of the huge potreros, crossing narrow ravines, ascending steep but not long slopes, until at about noon we stand on the brink of a gorge so deep that it may be termed a chasm.  We look down to a narrow bottom and groves of cottonwood trees.  To the north, the chasm is walled in by towering rocks; the Rio Grande flows through one corner; and on its opposite bank arise cliffs of trap lava and basalt, black and threatening, while the rocks on the west side are bright red, yellow, and white.  The trail to the Rito goes down into this abyss and climbs up on the other side through clefts and along steep slopes.  But we are not going to follow this trail.  We turn to the left, and with the dizzy chasm of Canon del Alamo to our right, proceed westward on one of the narrow tongues which, as the reader may remember, descend toward the Rio Grande from the high western mountains, and which are called in New Mexico potreros.  The one on which we are travelling, or rather the plateau, or mesa, that constitutes its surface, is called Potrero de las Vacas.

For about two hours we wander through a thin forest, From time to time the trail approaches the brink of the rocky chasm of the Canon del Alamo, near enough to have its echo return to us every word we may shout down into its depths.  Suddenly the timber grows sparse and we behold an open space on a gentle rise before us.  It is a bare, bleak spot, perhaps a quarter of a mile long, and occupying the entire width of the mesa, which here is not much broader.  Beyond, the timber begins again, and in the centre of the opening we see the fairly preserved ruins of an abandoned Indian pueblo.

[Illustration:  A Modern Pueblo]

There are still in places three stories visible.  The walls are of evenly broken parallelopipeds of very friable pumice-stone, and the village forms the usual quadrangles.  In the centre is a large square; and no fewer than six depressions indicate that the Pueblos had at one time as many as six circular subterranean estufas.  In the ruins of the dwellings over four hundred cells are still well defined, so that the population of this communal village must formerly have reached as high as one thousand souls.  Over and through the ruins are scattered the usual vestiges of primitive arts and industry,—­pottery fragments and arrow-heads.  Seldom do we meet with a stone hammer, whereas grinding-slabs and grinders are frequent, though for the most part scattered and broken.