The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1878-12-14
AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.
The Western iff-Dwellers-Rema aims
Of Stone Dwellings,.

The Western iff-Dwellers-Rema aims
Of Stone Dwellings.
OF late, blown over the plains, come
stories of strange, newly discovered cities
of the far southwest; picturesque piles
OF masonary, OF an age unknown to ira
dltlon. These ruins mark an era among
The mysterious mound
builders fade into comparative insignif-
canoe before the grander and more
ancient cliff jewellers, whose castles lift
their towers amid the sands of Arizona
and crown the terraced slopes of the Rio
Mancos and the Hovenweep pronounced
Hov-en-weep.
The ruin, accidentally discovered by
A. ID. Wilson, of the Hayden survey
several years ago, while he was pursuing
his labors as chief of the typographical
corps in southern Colorado, is described
to me by Mr.. Wilson as stone building,
about the size of the patent office. 1t
stood upon the bank of the Animas, in
the San Juan country, and contained
perhaps five hundred rooms The roof
and portions of the walls had fallen, but
the part standing indicated a height of
four stories. A number of the rooms
were fairly preserved, had small loop
hole windows, but no outer doors The
building had doubtless been entered
originally by means of ladders resting
on inches, and drawn in after the occu-
pants. The floors were of cedar, each
log as large around as a mans head, the
spaces filled neatly by smaller poles and
twigs, covered by carpet of cedar bark.
The ends of the timber were bruised and
frayed, as if severed by dull instru-
ment; in the vicinity were stone hatch
cts, and saws made of sand stone
slivers about two feet long, worn
to very smooth edge. A few hun
dred yards from the mammoth building
was second large house in ruins, be-
tween the two strongholds rows of small
dwellings, built of cobble-stOnes laid in
adobe, and arranged along streets, after
the style of the village of to-day. The
smaller houses were in more advanced
state of ruin, On account of the round
stones being more readily disintegrated
by the elements than the heavy masonry.
The streets and houses eff this deserted
town are overgrown by juniper and pin.
on,-the latter a dwarf wide-spreading
pine which bears beneath the scales of
its cones delicious and nutritious nuts.
From the size of the dead, as well as the
living, trees, and from their position on
the heaps of crumbling stone, Mr.. Will
son concludes that a great period OF
time has elapsed since the buildings fell.
How many hundred years they stood
after desertion before yielding to the
my dc nF Il
known.
The presence of sound wood in the
houses does not set aside their antiquity
In the dry, pure air of Southern Colora
do, wood fairly protected will last fol
centuries. In Asia, cedar wood has beer
kept a thousand years, and in Egypt
cedar is known to have been in perfect
preservation two thousand years after
it left the forest. The cedars through
out the territories of the southwest dc
not rot, even IN the groves They die
and stand erect, solid and sapless. The
winds and whirling sands carve the dead
trees into forms of fantastic beauty
drill holes through the trunks, and play
hide-and-go-seek in the perforated limb
until, after ages of resistance, they liter
ally blow away IN atoms OF line, clear
dust.
On the Rio San Juan, about twenty
five miles distant from the city of The
Animas, Mr. Wilson discovered the fol
lowing evening a similar pile, looming
solemnly in the twilight near their camp
ing place. The scene as described wa
weird in the extreme. AS the moor
arose, the shadows of the phantom build
ings were thrown darby across the sill
very plain. The blaze of cam p-fres, the
tiny tents, the negro cook, the men il
buckskin hunting garb, and the picketeC
mules, made a strange picture of the
summers night, with background o.
moonlit desert and crumbling ruins, or
whose ramparts lowered dead, gaunt
cedars, lifting their bleached skeleton:
like sheeted ghosts within the silent
watch towers OF the murky past-Scrib