The White Pine news. [volume] (Treasure City, Nev.) 1868-1906, 1886-03-06

Here and there is q running stream,
but they are few, and often inacces-
sible, for the land is made up of mesas
and barrancas. One rides across y
bare plain of sun-baked earth, when
suddenly he is brought to an abrupt
pause by chasm, with nearly vertical
sides, perhaps, 1000 feet deep. In its
fiat bottom one sees, perhaps, q small
stream, perhaps not, for in most of
these barrancas there is no water what
ever, except for q few weeks of the
winter. The mesa is as dry as the
heart of the Sahara. But presently
one comes upon the ruins of single
house, or possibly Dumber of houses
"a large village. And SO one goes on,
and finds abundant evidence of quite
a dense population, long since passed
away. Many of the villages were on
the mesas, others were in the barran-
cas-, and, what is most astonishing,
great numbers of them were not down
on the bottom land, but high up on the
nearly vertical cliffs, half way aud
more from their base to their summit.
Some of these cliff dwellings are built
of quarried stone. some of them are
actually excavated from the solid rock,
like those of Petra in Edom.
Mr. w. II. Holmes says, in respect
to their age: $50 great has been the
erosion, that many of the caves have
been almost obliterated.' And again !:
"At the base Of the cliff there is an al
most total absence of debris, so that
the period that has elapsed since these
houses were deserted must equal the
time taken 10 undermine the solid rock
plus the time required To reduce this
mass to dust; considering also that the
erosiye agents here are unusually weak,
the resulting period would certainly
not be inconsiderable."
We might adduce abundant quota
ti0ns from the various surveys, notably
the latter ones OF Hayden, all showing
this one thing, that an abundant pop
ulation ouce occupied the wide land
which is now given up to barrenness
and desolation. The region was then
evidently "well watered, like the gar
den of tie Lord" aud this 1t ceriainly y
could not have heen without rainfall
greatly in excess OF that which now
prevails.
One collateral fact is worthy of note,
as possible guide to the duration of
time involved. One characteristic
feature of the barren wastes stretching
from Nevada southwark is the nut
pines. called commonly pinon. They
are scattered here and there, and the
nuts afford much food to the Indians.
The trees are never large, but every
one of them has the look of being very
old. They are ragged, and battered,
and torn by the storms of ages. But
the point concerning them of interest
tn us now is this: there are no young
trees among them. The nuts fall and
never germinate, for lack of moisture.
Where the pinons occur In mountain
canons, supplied with water, the nuts
take root AS usual, but out on the desert
plains the old ones are alone, and
most surely wheE they are gone, there
will be none in their place.
The inference, then, is plain that the
nuts from which these present aged
trees took their origin dropped ON no
such dry and barren earth as lies there
now. 1t is no more certain that the
cave dwellers of New Mexico and the
men of the mesas must have had abun-
dant water than that these pine nuts
had 10, aud yet there stand the trees
whose period of growth goes back to
better days.