its thick adobe walls.  This is probably the most remarkable ancient building within the limits of the United States, For a long time it was called the House of Montezuma, though, of course, Montezuma never heard of it.  A similar ruin, called Casas Grandes, exists in Sonora.  The construction is what is called cajon, that is, adobe clay rammed into a box or frame, which is lifted for each successive course as the work advances.  In the dry air of that region such walls become extremely hard, and will endure for ages if the foundations are not sapped.** Kino paid a second visit to the ruin of Casa Grande in 1697, this time accompanied by Captain Juan Mateo Mange, an officer detailed with his command to escort the padres on their perilous journeys.

* The name is written Kuhn, Kuhne, Quino, and in several other ways.  Humboldt used Kuhn, and either this or Kuhne is probably the correct form, but long usage gives preference to Kino.

* See The North Americans of Yesterday, by F. S. Dellenbaugh, p. 234; and for complete details see papers by Cosmos Mindeleff, Thirteenth An.  Rep, Bu.  Eth. and Fifteenth An.  Rep.  Bu, Eth.; also Font’s description in Coues’s Garces, p. 93.

The method of the authorities was to establish a military post, called a presidio, at some convenient point, from which protection would be extended to several missions.  The soldiers in the field wore a sort of buckskin armour, with a double-visored helmet and a leathern buckler on the left arm.  Kino was as often without as with the guardianship of these warriors, and seems to have had very little trouble with the natives.  The Apaches, then and always, were the worst of all, In his numerous entradas he explored the region of his labours pretty thoroughly, reaching, in 1698, a hill from which he saw how the gulf ended at the mouth of the Colorado; and the following year he was again down the Gila, which he called Rio de los Apostoles, to the Colorado, now blessed with a fourth name, the Rio de los Martires.  “Buena Guia” “del Tizon,” “Esperanza,” and “los Martires,” all in about a century and a half, and still the great Dragon of Waters was not only untamed hut unknown.  Kino kept up his endeavours to inaugurate somewhere a religious centre, but without success.  The San Dionisio marked on his map at the mouth of the Gila was only the name he gave a Yuma village at that point, and was never anything more.  On November 21, 1701, Kino reached a point only one day’s journey above the sea, where he crossed the river on a raft, but he made no attempt to go to the mouth.  At last, however, on March 7, 1702, he actually set foot on the barren sands where the waters, gathered from a hundred mountain peaks of the far interior, are hurled against the sea-tide, the first white visitor since Onate, ninety-eight years before.  Visits of Europeans to this region were then counted by centuries and half-centuries, yet on the far Atlantic shore of the continent they