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 Zuñi, 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 his eager gold-seekers, in 1540.
For now, as then, the members of the tribe reside together in one
immense community building. It is rather droll to find among these
natives of the desert the idea of the modern apartment house; but, in
this place, as in all the settlements of the Pueblo Indians, communal
dwellings were in existence long before the discovery of America, and
the _mesa_ of Ácoma was inhabited as it now is, when the Pilgrims
landed upon Plymouth Rock.

[Illustration: RAIN WATER BASIN, ÁCOMA.]

[Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF ÁCOMA.]