The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1879-04-30
THE WESTERN oL1FR DWBLEERs.

Of late, blown over the plains, come stories
of strange, newly-discovered cities of the far
Southwest picturesque piles of masonry. of
an age unknown to tradition These ruins
mark an era among antiquarians.s The mys-
terious mound builders fade into comparative
insigni6cance before the grander and more an
Gent cliff-dwellers, whose castles lift their
towers amid the sands of Arizona aud crown
the terraced slopes Of the Rio Mancos aud the
Hovenweep pronounced Hov-en weep.) Is
A ruin, accidentally discovered by A. d.
Wilson, or the Hayden survey, several years
ago, while he was pursuing his labors as chief
of the Typographical corps in Southern Colora-
do, is described to me by Mr. Wilson as a
stone building, about the size of the patent
office. 1t stood upon the bank of the Animas.
in the San Juan country, and contained per-
haps five hundred rooms. The roof and por-
tions of the walls had fallen, but the part
standing indicated 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 en-
tered originally by means of ladders resting
on inches, and drawn in after the occupants.
The floors were of CEDAR each log as large
around as mau's head the spaces filled neat
ly by smaller poles aud twigs covered by a
carpet of cedar bark. The ends of the tim
Der were bruised aud fray, as If severed by
dull instrument 10 the vicinity were stone
hatchets, and saws made of sandstone silvers
about two feet long, worn to a smooth edge.
A few hundred yards from the mammoth
building was second large house in ruins,
and between the two strongholds rows of
adobe, and arranged along streets, after the
style of the village of to-day. The smaller
houses were in a 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
of this deserted town are overgrown by juni-
perand pinon--the latter widespread
ing pine which bears beneath tho scales of it
delicious and nutritious nuts. From the size
of the dead, as web as the living trees, and
from their position on the heaps of crumbling
stone, Mr. Wilson concludes that great peri
cd of time has elapsed since the buildings
fell. How many hundred years they stood aft
ter desertion before yielding to the inroads of
time cannot be certainly known. -
The presence of sound wood in the houses
does not set aside their antiquity. In the dry,
pure air Of southern Colorado, wood fairly
protected viii last for centuries. In Asia cedar
wood has been kept thousand years. and in
Egypt cedar is known to have been in perfect
preservation two Thousand years after it left
s''o ist. Tbs eedarst throughont the teriSa
torres Of the southwest do not rot, even in the
groves. They die, and stand erect, solid and
sapless. The winds and whirlwind sands
carve the dead trees into forms of fantastic
beauty, drill holes through the trunks, and
play at bide.and go-seek in the perforated
limbs until, after ages of resistance, they lit
orally blow away in atoms of fine, clean dust
On the Rio San Juan, about twenty. five
miles distant from the city Of the Animas,
Mr.. Wilson discovered the following evening
a similar pile, looming solemnly in the twi-
light near their camping-place. The scene as
described was wierd in the extreme. AS tho
moon arose, the shadows of the phantom
buildings were thrown darkly across the sill
very plain. The blaze Of camp-fires, the tiny
tents, the negro cook, the men in buckskin
hunting garb, and the picketed mules, made
a strange picture of the summers night, with
background of moonlit desert aud crumbling
ruins, on whose ran parts lowered dead, gaunt
cedars lifting their bleached skeletons like
sheeted ghosts within the silent watch towers
of the murky past.