The outcome of this affair is being watched with a good deal of
amusement and interest.
* * * * *
A scientific expedition, headed by Professor Libbey, of Princeton
University, started early in July to explore a mesa or table-land of
sandstone which rises out of the alkali plains, in the neighborhood of
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
This mesa is seven hundred feet high. Its top has never before been
trodden by man, for it rises from the plain with perpendicular walls
that are inaccessible to even the most experienced mountain-climbers.
The mesa is situated near the Indian village of Acoma, and is called by
the natives the Enchanted Mesa. They have a wonderful legend about it.
The rock is fifteen acres in extent and, according to their story, was
once the dwelling-place of the Acoma tribe. After a while, as the tribe
increased, there was not room enough on the rock for their dwellings and
their fields, so they made a way down the rock, and used to send their
able-bodied men below to sow and reap, while the aged and the young did
the housekeeping on top of the mesa.
The story goes on to say that once, when the young men were away in the
fields, a terrible storm arose; the thunders raged and the winds blew,
and when at last the storm subsided it was found that the rocky
staircase by which the Acomas were used to go up and down had been
entirely swept away.
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