Nevertheless It Is The Home Of The
Multitude Of Our Fellow-Mortals, Men As Well As Animals And Plants.
Centuries ago it was inhabited by tribes of Indians, who, long before
Columbus saw America, built thousands of stone houses in its crags,
and large ones, some of them several stories high, with hundreds of
rooms, on the mesas of the adjacent regions.
Their cliff-dwellings,
almost numberless, are still to be seen in the canyon, scattered along
both sides from top to bottom and throughout its entire length, built
of stone and mortar in seams and fissures like swallows' nests, or on
isolated ridges and peaks. The ruins of larger buildings are found on
open spots by the river, but most of them aloft on the brink of the
wildest, giddiest precipices, sites evidently chosen for safety from
enemies, and seemingly accessible only to the birds of the air. Many
caves were also used as dwelling-places, as were mere seams on cliff-fronts formed by unequal weathering and with or without outer or side
walls; and some of them were covered with colored pictures of animals.
The most interesting of these cliff-dwellings had pathetic little
ribbon-like strips of garden on narrow terraces, where irrigating
water could be carried to them - most romantic of sky-gardens, but
eloquent of hard times.
In recesses along the river and on the first plateau flats above its
gorge were fields and gardens of considerable size, where irrigating
ditches may still be traced.
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