Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/172

158 which the surroundings have imperceptibly exercised in a powerful degree upon human thought and feeling. The treeless, sandy plains, the low heights of the borders covered with junipers, stand in impressive contrast to the few isolated table-mountains which rise perpendicularly here and there like gigantic towers. Many of the tales rest upon historical foundations, and the history is clothed as with the drapery of a wonderful landscape. The high mesa of Zuñi, called in the language of the tribe "To-yo-a-la-na," or Thunder-mountain, is four miles at the northern end, six miles at the southern end, from the pueblo; then it bends around to the east and turns back to the north. The red sandstone rocks rise nearly everywhere perpendicularly from the plain. The summit is a plateau, overgrown with junipers, pinons, and cactus, and with scanty grass. On it are the ruins of six small pueblos. This group of ruins has been christened "Old Zuñi," but erroneously, for the aggregated villages were built after 1680 and deserted about 1705, when the tribe of Zuñi, which had fled to the rocks before the Navajos and from fear of the Spaniards, returned of its own accord to the valley where its pueblo now stands. But several ruins of old towns lie at the foot of the mesa, concerning which very definite historical traditions still exist. "Ma-tza-ki," once an important place, is in the northwest, and "O'aquima" in the south. The rocks there form a niche which is filled to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet with steep, partly barren heaps of débris. Imposing cliffs menacingly overlook these hills, but the rock-wall in the background of the niche rises