Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-02

and filling the long winter evenings with
song and quaint Spanish games with the
| cordial household. Three wintry days
spent digging in a wonderful American
| Pompeii.
Three-quarters Of o mile from the Chaves
homestead is a low, irregular mound,
within few rods of which one might pass
without q suspicion of its interest For the
hundred years that mound has been known
to civilized people, it kept its secret well
hidden until 1884. But one day a savage
windstorm gouged out lot of sand from its
fanks, and a passer noticed the top of re-
markable wall peeping out Don Amado
! Chaves, eldest son Of the brave old colonel,
and now Territorial Superintendent of Pub
lie Instruction, had excavations made which
showed that the mound was the grave of an
entire prehistoric pueblo-buried by the
drifting sands of countless ages. The whole
of the first story is still standing, though
all the rooms were choked with debris from
the walls of the second and third stories
The masonry is of stone, and wonderfully
good. Down one of those time-tried walls
the point OF spade slides as down planed
board
THE BURIED RUINs OF NEW MEXICO.
This was the first of the countless wonder
full ruins in New Mexico with which
became familiar; and exploration of ofhundreds
of others since has not destroyed my interest
in that strange, buried, prehistoric city of
the aborigine at San Mateo. The pueblo
was built in one enormous Penthouse in the
shape of rectangle inclosing a court
yard. The outer walls were nearly 200 feet
long on a side, and about 80 to 10 feet high.
Not a door or loophole of any sort broke
that wall, and the only access to the court
yard, upon which all the doors and
"windows" opened, was by ladders which
could be pulled up over the wall, thus leay-
ing the inhabitants inside their strange
stone box very safe from any foes of their
day Even the doorways upon the little
inner square, and those from room to room
within, were SO tiny that q foe already in
the house could easily be overcome as he
squeezed through-wee openings only
about 16 inches wide and 3 feet or less in
height.
In my excavations-for I shouldered a
spade and dug there enthusiastically, as
would any young American who had
chance-I uncovered several of these 'toy''
doors, which interested me greatly. 1 did
not then know that these were the charac-
teristic doorways of all ancient pueblo
architecture, these harassed people pre-
ferring domestic inconvenience for the
sake of greater safety against their innumer-
able foes; and was quite ready to accept
the theories of equally green folk (who,
however, are not too modest to write "scien-
tifc" books) that such ruins were peopled
by race of dwarfs
A SKELETON WITH BEAUTIFUL HAIR
But despite the strength of its solid stone
walls, this house town of perhaps 200 peo-
pie had met the fate of so many of the
pueblos of the old days, and tragedy is
written all across its mysterious ruins. The
lower rooms (Which are all perfect except
as to roof are choked with the debris of the
upper ones-ful of charred remnants of
roof and rafter. The pueblo was taken in
war-doubtless by surprise, for it should
easily have withstood any assault with the
weapons of those days, and doubtless by the
Navsjos, who roamed thickest there-manv
of its people were slain, and then the fire.
brand of the savage victors did its work
and tumbled the ruined home upon the
careless grave of the dead owners.
There are many, many human bones under
that ancient wreck, and Don Amado once
dug up, in the largest room of all, the per-
feet skeleton Of woman, her long, silken.
black hair still beautiful as in the forgotten
days when she washed it at the little acequia
-irrigating ditch-whose course can still be
dimly traced along the valley. 1 found
many arrow heaos ana implements OF petri-
fed wood and volcanic glass, few finely
made bone beads, and bushels of fragments
of pottery, still beautifully bright of hue
after all these centuries, and many other in
teresting relics.
TIE SIGHT OF LIFETIME.
Getting back at last to the railroad at
Grants with whole cargo of curios of ali
sorts, packed them for shipment and then
enjoyed brief visit with the Jolly COWBOYS
of the 99,0OO-acre A L ranch-on whose
annual round-ups I have since had MANY a
glorious time-and some other interesting
experiences. Acoma, the strange sky city