THE STORY OF THE MESAS

HOSE who have travelled through our Southwestern States have seen from the car window innumerable mesas or isolated plateaus rising abruptly for hundreds of feet from the bare and often arid plains. The word mesa is Spanish for table.

Once the level of these mesa tops was the level of all of this vast Southwestern country, but the rains and floods of centuries have washed away the softer earths down to its present level, leaving standing only the rocky spots or those so covered with surface rocks that the rains could not reach the softer gravel underneath.

The Mesa Verde, or green mesa (because it is covered with stunted cedar and pinyon trees in a land where trees are few), is perhaps most widely known.

The Mesa Verde is one of the largest mesas. It is fifteen miles long and eight miles wide. At its foot are masses of broken rocks rising from three hundred to five hundred feet above the bare plains. Above these rise the cliffs.

The cliff dwellings nestle under its overhanging cliffs near the top.

THE EXPLORATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED RUINS OFTEN REQUIRES MUCH HARD AND EVEN PERILOUS CLIMBING

MANY GATHERED NIGHTLY AROUND THE CAMPFIRE TO HEAR DR. FEWKES TELL THE STORY OF THE ANCIENT PEOPLE Photograph by Mrs. C. R. Miller