The Arizona champion., 1883-11-24

I end, he called for and bade a last adieu to every one he knew in the town.
 The Flag advocates strongly div ision of the county, with Flagstaff as the seat of Government. Admitting of some personal interest, the Flag is sound on this question. A citizen of Flagstaff, being called to Prescott as a witness, greets the officer with the same unbounded joy that man in the interior of the Indian Territory starts for the Federal Court at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Prescott is the city of various distances to the average citi- zen of Yavapai, and over such roads that 1t must seem a matter of lndiffer- ence (and we doubt not he often for gets) whether he Is the witness or the criminal.
 The opening of Wilson's hall, and the social hop, eclipsed in magnitude all former social gatherings here. Over twenty ladies were in attendance, and a bountlful supper was done jus tice to by the "fair women and brave men," None of the ardent was in dulged in by any of the Flagstaff boys who attended; all went merry as a marriage bell, and they did not "go .home till morning."
 The famous pueblo of cliff dwellers lies east of this place ten miles-a pleasant drive through heavy bodies of dark green pine woods, interspersed with pretty parks and prairie glades. Ascending from the A. x P. railroad, you have no warning of the great chasm before you until you are on its very brink, and you look down into a gorge so deep, so dark and forbidding in its aspect, that you may well expect to find therein something akin to Mil tons
 "Stygian cave forlorn,
 Where breeding darkness ever dwells."
 Descending into this canon, you feel an oppressive sensation, caused by the shutting out of the broad world, but you soon lose the unpleasant feel ing in silent contemplation of strange and wonderful sights around you. It seems, indeed, that you are transfer red for the hour to some country and cline remote, abounding in forms grotesque and sights unique. You find trees and shrubs of a variety wholly different from those just left on the heights above you; birds of brighter plumage and gayer song; ever and anon the skeleton of some monster beast, and massive pairs of horns. Great fleets of logs, piled high by the floods of former years, dispute your passage and give you some knowledge of the volume and power of the water that flows from the melting snow in the higher alti- tudes. We found where one of these vast drifts had been set on fire by an Indian or adventurer, and lay, ablack and desolate mass, amid the ruin the heat of its burning had wrought. Far up the frowning cliffs, their very walls had decomposed and tumbled down the blackened walls to mingle with half-burned trees and heaps of ash. It seemed alone, of all places on earth, a fitting haunt for gloomy Byron, when he conceived his dream of "Darkness.
 Niched in the walls of these great cliffs, and within the narrow confines of this tortuous gorge, is the ancient city of the Cliff Dwellers. Some freak of nature, or the wearing of the elements, have worn great caverns into the stratafed rocks, affording both floor and roof; leaving for the cliff dweller but the division of this space, by walls of stone and mud, according to fancy or number of his family. The walls show evidence of some skill and rare ingenuity in their construction, enclosing all the covered space, even though the outer wall is on the brink of the abyss below. Much has been sad, and many different theories have been advanced, as to the cause of the disappearance from the face of the earth of this prehistoric race. Was 1t war, famine or pestil- ence2 We stood amid the silent ruins of this city of the departed, and pondered upon the solemn thought! A whole and mighty people gone gone foreverl Not one left to record its history or relate its traditionsl But the soemnity of the occasion kept not our mind from a practical solution of this great problem. War, famine and pestilence may have de stroyed many of these people, but we think the continual dropping of in fant dwellers from the narrow confines of a four-lnch door-yard into five hundred feet of space did the work This theory will be disputed, but 1t will not be denied that it must have caused great faLtng 0f among the children ofthese tribes. These towns are accessible from but one or two I,oiptc and for hut tu,O Dareope to