[Illustration:  LOOKING THROUGH A CREVICE OF THE ENCHANTED MESA.]

[Illustration:  THE LYLE GUN AND ROPES.]

[Illustration:  MAN IN BOATSWAIN’S CHAIR.]

[Illustration:  THE HODGE PARTY.]

[Illustration:  INDIAN RELICS.]

The discovery of pieces of pottery here does not of itself prove great advancement in the race that made them; for, curiously enough, the manufacture of rude pottery is one of the first steps taken by man from a savage to a semi-civilized state.  The various races of mankind have usually reached this art soon after their discovery of fire.  In fact, such an invention is almost inevitable.  Thus, an early method of cooking food has always been to put it into a basket smeared with clay, which is supported over a fire.  The clay served the double purpose of preventing liquids from escaping and protecting the basket from the flame.  Now, even the dullest savage could not have failed to notice, after a time, that the clay became hardened by the fire, and in that state was sufficient for his purpose without the basket.  Simple as it seems, the discovery of this fact marks an important epoch in the progress of every primitive race, and some authorities on ethnology distinguish the two great divisions of Savagery and Barbarism by placing in the lower grade those who have not arrived at the knowledge of making pottery.

[Illustration:  THE TOP OF THE MESA ENCANTADA.]

[Illustration:  THE APPROACH TO ACOMA.]

Soon after passing this haunted rock, and driving further over the mesa-dotted plain, we came in sight of the weird city of the sky called Acoma.  It occupies the summit of a table-land, the ascent to which is now a winding defile, flanked by frowning cliffs.  Even this path, though readily ascended on horseback, is too precipitous and sandy for a wagon.  Accordingly, as none of our party that day enjoyed the privilege of being an equestrian, we left our vehicle at the foot of the mesa, and completed the journey on foot.  Some adventurous spirits, however, chose a short cut up the precipice along a natural fissure in the rocks, which, having been transformed with loose stones into a kind of ladder, was formerly, before these peaceful times, the only means of access to the summit.  A steeper scramble would be hard to find.  I must confess, however, that before taking either of these routes, we halted to enjoy a lunch for which the drive had given us the keenest appetite, and which we ate al fresco in the shadow of a cliff, surrounded by a dozen curious natives.  Then, the imperious demands of hunger satisfied, we climbed three hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding plain, and stood in what is, with perhaps the exception of Zuni, the oldest inhabited town in North America.  Before us, on what seemed to be an island of the air, was a perfect specimen of the aboriginal civilization found here by the Spanish conqueror, Coronado, and