Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1895-01-02

And various animalculfp
OF middle high and low degree
For nature just beats al creation
In multiplied adulteration.
Joseph A. Chapleau in Boston Herald.
in THE CAVEHOUSES.
9'No, senior, l will not go with you;
neither will my people 60 with you. 1t
is not good to go to the rock houses.
Spirits have their walking place 5here
spirits of white men. The ghosts Of
our own people are net good, but the
spirits of white men arr devils"
That was the encouragement receiv-
ed on setting out for my first summers
chronological work among the cliff dwell
ings of New Mexico. 1t was the old
headman of the pueblo, Ziacoto, who
refused in this stately way to lend me
any guides for the trip, and when he
saw I was determined to go anyhow dis
missed me with the cheerful warning,
"When you are dead, let not your
mothers spirit reproach meH'
tried ito find out how long the cliff
dwellings were supposed to have been
haunted, but the old fellow was uncom-
municative. 'How can tell?' he an
swered ''Spirits live long. Tt is most
likely they have been there many years.
I myself have not seen them, but it is
said that always evil spirits dwelt in
the rock houses, and within year they
have walked. My people have seen them
and died. It is not good to go there"
OF course did not care anything for
old Yellow Jackets ghosts. had heard
often of the lost silver mine of the Te-
wan, and supposed that this was one
of the ways the Indians tried of keeping
strangers out of the mountains and prob
ably had told the same thing so often
they had come to believe it themselves.
But we set out for the cave dwellings
nevertheless with an outfit of six,
though none but the packers knew any
thing at all about the location of the
dwellings, and they only by hearsay.
1t was said that this set of cavehouses
had never been visited by white men,
and by the time we got to them I was
well iincIliiaed to believe it. rhey were
two days travel up the maii; s4ynr of
the Santa Cruz into the vhy heart of |
the mountains and then another full
days crawl up through a little black |
box canyon, narrow as knife blade |
and dark as squaw's pocket, with only |
a thin blue line overhead where the sky |
came, and where you could almost see |
tiils tbs stars III III day tiilie.
Once out of the canyon, with the roar |
of the sweam below still in our ears, we |
found ourselves almost in the middle of |
a big SANGER shaped mesa, surrounded
on three sides with mountains and |
dropping off sheer on the other to the |
valley OF the Rio Grande. A good sized |
mountain torrent, swelled with the |
melting of the SHOWS, cut across the |
plain and dropped into the crack in the
earth out of which we had just crawled,
and five miles away, cutting diagonally |
across the mesa, was thick pine forest, |
and rising out of the center of that, |
pink in the light of the sunset and all |
the more vivid against the green of the |
forest beneath it, rose the long, straight |
wall of the cliff where we knew we
And, sure enough, next morning when
we trotted up through the cool green Of
the pine woods, fresh with the smell of |
the dew still on it, there were the caves, |
hundreds and hundreds of them, carved |
out OF the soft tufa cliff that on close
inspection was yellow instead of pink.
The top Of the cliff was 80 or 100 feet
high, sheer outcrop of volcanic ash
and pumice. But the straight wall in
which the caves were cut was only the
upper 40 or 80 feet of it, the base being
buried in broken mass of talus, slop-
ing down at an angle Of 40 degrees to
the river that swept down along the
foot of the slope like mill race.
We put in good days work at the
rock houses, which did not look as though
they had ever been touched by white
man. Casey ran base line for his sur
vey and nearly dropped his rodman off
the cliff doing it, for it was terribly
steep in places.
By night there had come up regu-
lar mountain thunderstorm, and for our
own convenience we had moved into one
of the rock houses and stabbed the mules
in another. 1t was as comfortable a
camp as one could want in storm, no
possibility Of the rain getting to US.
while, perched, as we were, high up the
cliff, the prospect out over the level top
of the great pine forest was magnificent,
the black and gray masses Of clouds
rolling down over the green of the
woods, and the river far down below us
plunging over the rocks and spouting
up in white spray around the bend of
the cliff
The wind howled, and the rain came
down straight and thick as telegraph
wire, breaking into mist where it hit
the rocks and pitting the swift moving
current of the midstrealn. The thunder
kept Oh booming like mountain batter
les in the hills behind us and rolled
and ratified like the crash of avalanches
down the slope. Night had fallen, and
the only light outside was the light
ming that lit up the top of the forest
and the mountains beyond with pale,
slaty light and turned the round door,
way of the cave into the mouth of q
great camera obscura.
But we were dry and comfortable
The fire threw up big, fanciful silhou-
cites of the party on the walls, while
the smell of the frying bacon set the
coyotes to bowling mournfully outside,
as though Fray Antonio and the hell
hounds were out for midnight foray
sure enough. We did not mind the
storm-rather enjoyed it, in fact-ate,
smoked and told stories and finally,
when the conversation had tagged, old
Salts, one of the packers, turned to the
other, a young man, with the remark,
'sSay, Rich, this must be pretty close
to the place where you and Corelli had
your walk around with the Nayajoes last
spring, ain it?r
1t was good draw for story. but
Rich only growled something about it
being 'sto9 d-d close" and then
curleEs s.cwn ON his blankets again and
4 \. 49, -