Note XI-39 — Chapter XI · ANTIQUITIES OF ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO.

Sitgreaves' Report, Zuñi and Colorado Rivers, 1853, pp. 8-9; Whipple, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii., pp. 81, 46-50; Ives' Colorado Riv., p. 117, no details; Möllhausen, Tagebuch, pp. 306-8; Id., Reisen in die Felsengeb., tom. ii., pp. 148-50, 164-5, 399-401; Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., pp. 253, vol. vi., p. 68, plates of inscriptions; Hay, in Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, 2da época, tom. i., p. 29; Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 146-7. A writer in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, July 3, 1868, says that the most extensive ruins in Arizona or New Mexico are situated above the high falls of the Little Colorado, 20 miles north of the San Francisco Mountains. They extend for miles along the river, and include well-made walls of hewn stone now standing to the height of six or eight feet. Both streets and irrigating canals may be traced for miles. This writer speaks of the Jesuit inscriptions. According to an article in the San Francisco Herald of 1853, quoted in the Cal. Farmer of June 22, 1860, Capt. Joseph Walker found some remarkable ruins on the Colorado Chiquito in 1850. He speaks of 'a kind of a citadel, around which lay the ruins of a city more than a mile in length.' The streets were still traceable, running at right angles. The buildings were all of stone 'reduced to ruins by the action of some great heat which had evidently passed over the whole country.... All the stones were burnt, some of them almost cindered, others glazed as if melted. This appearance was visible in every ruin he met with. A storm of fire seemed to have swept over the whole country and the inhabitants must have fallen before it.' The central building with walls 15 or 18 feet long and 10 feet high, of hewn stone, stood on a rock 20 or 30 feet high, itself fused by the heat. The ruins seen by Walker were in all probability similar to those described by Sitgreaves, and the Captain, or the writer of this article, drew heavily on his imagination for many of his facts.