[Illustration: HOUSES AT LAGUNA.]

[Illustration: THE MESA FROM THE EAST.]

The Indian name of this remarkable cliff is _Katzímo_, and the title
_Haunted Mesa_ would be a more appropriate translation of the Spanish
name, _Mesa Encantada_, than _Enchanted;_ for the people of Ácoma
believe its summit to be haunted by the spirits of their ancestors. A
sinister tradition exists among them that one day, many centuries
ago, when all the men of the village were at work upon the plain, a
mass of rock, detached by the slow action of the elements, or else
precipitated by an earthquake shock, fell into the narrow cleft by
which alone an ascent or descent of the _mesa_ was made, and
rendered it impassable. The women and children, left thus on the
summit of a cliff four hundred and thirty feet in height, and cut off
from communication with their relatives and friends, who were unable
to rejoin and rescue them, are said to have slowly perished by
starvation, and their bones, pulverized in the course of centuries,
are believed to have been, finally, blown or washed away. To test the
truth of this tradition, at least so far as traces of a previous
inhabitancy of the _mesa_ could confirm it, Mr. Frederick W. Hodge,
in 1895, made an attempt to reach the summit; but, though he climbed
to within sixty feet of the top, he could on that occasion go no
higher. He found, however, along the sides of the cliffs enormous
masses of _débris_, washed down by the streams of water which, after
a tempest, drain off from the summit in a thousand little cataracts.
Not only did Mr. Hodge discover in this rubbish several fragments of
Indian pottery, but he, also, observed certain holes in the cliff
which seemed to him to have been cut there specially for hands and