[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.They rolled and bumped and cut intome, and I sustained many a bruise trying to protect the sinewy slender legs ofmy horse.The descent ended without serious mishap.Snake Gulch had a character and sublimity which cast Nail Canyon into theobscurity of forgetfulness.The great contrast lay in the diversity ofstructure.The rock was bright red, with parapet of yellow, that leaned,heaved, bulged outward.These emblazoned cliff walls, two thousand feet high,were cracked from turret to base; they bowled out at such an angle that wewere afraid to ride under them.Mountains of yellow rock hung balanced, readyto tumble down at the first angry breath of the gods.We rode among carvedstones, pillars, obelisks and sculptured ruined walls of a fallen Babylon.Slides reaching all the way across and far up the canyon wall obstructed ourpassage.On every stone silent green lizards sunned themselves, glidingswiftly as we came near to their marble homes.We came into a region of wind-worn caves, of all sizes and shapes, high andlow on the cliffs; but strange to say, only on the north side of the canyonthey appeared with dark mouths open and uninviting.One, vast and deep, thoughfar off, menaced us as might the cave of a tawny-maned king of beasts; yet itimpelled, fascinated and drew us on."It's a long, hard climb," said Wallace to the Colonel, as we dismounted."Boys, I'm with you," came the reply.And he was with us all the way, as weclambered over the immense blocks and threaded a passage between them andpulled weary legs up, one after the other.So steep lay the jumble of clifffragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we got near it.Suddenlywe rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing looming before us.The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there.A gloomy hole,large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in the cliff by ages ofnature's chiseling."Vast sepulcher of Time's past, give up thy dead!" cried Wallace, solemnly."Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!" quoted I, as feelingly as my friend.Page 48 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlJones hauled us down from the clouds."Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here?" said he.Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity of thisplace, he did not show it.The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold.Stony ridges circledfrom wall to wall.We climbed till we were two hundred feet from the opening,yet we were not half-way to the dome.Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked like ants.So steep didthe ascent become that we desisted; for if one of us had slipped on the smoothincline, the result would have been terrible.Our voices rang clear and hollowfrom the walls.We were so high that the sky was blotted out by theoverhanging square, cornice-like top of the door; and the light was weird,dim, shadowy, opaque.It was a gray tomb."Waa-hoo!" yelled Jones with all the power of his wide, leather lungs.Thousands of devilish voices rushed at us, seemingly on puffs of wind.Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the back of the cave,and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on again in fiendish concatenation.We did not again break the silence of that tomb, where the spirits of ageslay in dusty shrouds; and we crawled down as if we had invaded a sanctuary andinvoked the wrath of the gods.We all proposed names: Montezuma's Amphitheater being the only rival ofJones's selection, Echo cave, which we finally chose.Mounting our horses again, we made twenty miles of Snake Gulch by noon, whenwe rested for lunch.All the way up we had played the boy's game of spying forsights, with the honors about even.It was a question if Snake Gulch everbefore had such a raking over.Despite its name, however, we discovered nosnakes.From the sandy niche of a cliff where we lunched Wallace espied a tomb, andheralded his discovery with a victorious whoop.Digging in old ruins roused inhim much the same spirit that digging in old books roused in me.Before wereached him, he had a big bowie-knife buried deep in the red, sandy floor ofthe tomb.This one-time sealed house of the dead had been constructed of small stones,held together by a cement, the nature of which, Wallace explained, had neverbecome clear to civilization.It was red in color and hard as flint, harderthan the rocks it glued together.The tomb was half-round in shape, and itsfloor was a projecting shelf of cliff rock.Wallace unearthed bits of pottery,bone and finely braided rope, all of which, to our great disappointment,crumbled to dust in our fingers.In the case of the rope, Wallace assured us,this was a sign of remarkable antiquity.In the next mile we traversed, we found dozens of these old cells, alldemolished except a few feet of the walls, all despoiled of their one-timepossessions.Wallace thought these depredations were due to Indians of our owntime.Suddenly we came upon Jones, standing under a cliff, with his neckcraned to a desperate angle."Now, what's that?" demanded he, pointing upward.Page 49 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlHigh on the cliff wall appeared a small, round protuberance.It was of theunmistakably red color of the other tombs; and Wallace, more excited than hehad been in the cougar chase, said it was a sepulcher, and he believed it hadnever been opened.From an elevated point of rock, as high up as I could well climb, I decidedboth questions with my glass.The tomb resembled nothing so much as amud-wasp's nest, high on a barn wall.The fact that it had never been brokenopen quite carried Wallace away with enthusiasm."This is no mean discovery, let me tell you that," he declared."I amfamiliar with the Aztec, Toltec and Pueblo ruins, and here I find nosimilarity.Besides, we are out of their latitude.An ancient race ofpeople--very ancient indeed lived in this canyon.How long ago, it isimpossible to tell.""They must have been birds," said the practical Jones."Now, how'd that tombever get there? Look at it, will you?"As near as we could ascertain, it was three hundred feet from the groundbelow, five hundred from the rim wall above, and could not possibly have beenapproached from the top.Moreover, the cliff wall was as smooth as a wall ofhuman make."There's another one," called out Jones."Yes, and I see another; no doubt there are many of them," replied Wallace."In my mind, only one thing possible accounts for their position.You observethey appear to be about level with each other.Well, once the Canyon floor ranalong that line, and in the ages gone by it has lowered, washed away by therains."This conception staggered us, but it was the only one conceivable.No doubtwe all thought at the same time of the little rainfall in that arid section ofArizona."How many years?" queried Jones."Years! What are years?" said Wallace."Thousands of years, ages have passedsince the race who built these tombs lived."Some persuasion was necessary to drag our scientific friend from the spot,where obviously helpless to do anything else, he stood and gazed longingly atthe isolated tombs.The canyon widened as we proceeded; and hundreds of pointsthat invited inspection, such as overhanging shelves of rock, dark fissures,caverns and ruins had to be passed by, for lack of time.Still, a more interesting and important discovery was to come, and thepleasure and honor of it fell to me.My eyes were sharp and peculiarlyfarsighted--the Indian sight, Jones assured me; and I kept them searching thewalls in such places as my companions overlooked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl matkasanepid.xlx.pl
.They rolled and bumped and cut intome, and I sustained many a bruise trying to protect the sinewy slender legs ofmy horse.The descent ended without serious mishap.Snake Gulch had a character and sublimity which cast Nail Canyon into theobscurity of forgetfulness.The great contrast lay in the diversity ofstructure.The rock was bright red, with parapet of yellow, that leaned,heaved, bulged outward.These emblazoned cliff walls, two thousand feet high,were cracked from turret to base; they bowled out at such an angle that wewere afraid to ride under them.Mountains of yellow rock hung balanced, readyto tumble down at the first angry breath of the gods.We rode among carvedstones, pillars, obelisks and sculptured ruined walls of a fallen Babylon.Slides reaching all the way across and far up the canyon wall obstructed ourpassage.On every stone silent green lizards sunned themselves, glidingswiftly as we came near to their marble homes.We came into a region of wind-worn caves, of all sizes and shapes, high andlow on the cliffs; but strange to say, only on the north side of the canyonthey appeared with dark mouths open and uninviting.One, vast and deep, thoughfar off, menaced us as might the cave of a tawny-maned king of beasts; yet itimpelled, fascinated and drew us on."It's a long, hard climb," said Wallace to the Colonel, as we dismounted."Boys, I'm with you," came the reply.And he was with us all the way, as weclambered over the immense blocks and threaded a passage between them andpulled weary legs up, one after the other.So steep lay the jumble of clifffragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we got near it.Suddenlywe rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing looming before us.The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there.A gloomy hole,large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in the cliff by ages ofnature's chiseling."Vast sepulcher of Time's past, give up thy dead!" cried Wallace, solemnly."Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!" quoted I, as feelingly as my friend.Page 48 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlJones hauled us down from the clouds."Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here?" said he.Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity of thisplace, he did not show it.The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold.Stony ridges circledfrom wall to wall.We climbed till we were two hundred feet from the opening,yet we were not half-way to the dome.Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked like ants.So steep didthe ascent become that we desisted; for if one of us had slipped on the smoothincline, the result would have been terrible.Our voices rang clear and hollowfrom the walls.We were so high that the sky was blotted out by theoverhanging square, cornice-like top of the door; and the light was weird,dim, shadowy, opaque.It was a gray tomb."Waa-hoo!" yelled Jones with all the power of his wide, leather lungs.Thousands of devilish voices rushed at us, seemingly on puffs of wind.Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the back of the cave,and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on again in fiendish concatenation.We did not again break the silence of that tomb, where the spirits of ageslay in dusty shrouds; and we crawled down as if we had invaded a sanctuary andinvoked the wrath of the gods.We all proposed names: Montezuma's Amphitheater being the only rival ofJones's selection, Echo cave, which we finally chose.Mounting our horses again, we made twenty miles of Snake Gulch by noon, whenwe rested for lunch.All the way up we had played the boy's game of spying forsights, with the honors about even.It was a question if Snake Gulch everbefore had such a raking over.Despite its name, however, we discovered nosnakes.From the sandy niche of a cliff where we lunched Wallace espied a tomb, andheralded his discovery with a victorious whoop.Digging in old ruins roused inhim much the same spirit that digging in old books roused in me.Before wereached him, he had a big bowie-knife buried deep in the red, sandy floor ofthe tomb.This one-time sealed house of the dead had been constructed of small stones,held together by a cement, the nature of which, Wallace explained, had neverbecome clear to civilization.It was red in color and hard as flint, harderthan the rocks it glued together.The tomb was half-round in shape, and itsfloor was a projecting shelf of cliff rock.Wallace unearthed bits of pottery,bone and finely braided rope, all of which, to our great disappointment,crumbled to dust in our fingers.In the case of the rope, Wallace assured us,this was a sign of remarkable antiquity.In the next mile we traversed, we found dozens of these old cells, alldemolished except a few feet of the walls, all despoiled of their one-timepossessions.Wallace thought these depredations were due to Indians of our owntime.Suddenly we came upon Jones, standing under a cliff, with his neckcraned to a desperate angle."Now, what's that?" demanded he, pointing upward.Page 49 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlHigh on the cliff wall appeared a small, round protuberance.It was of theunmistakably red color of the other tombs; and Wallace, more excited than hehad been in the cougar chase, said it was a sepulcher, and he believed it hadnever been opened.From an elevated point of rock, as high up as I could well climb, I decidedboth questions with my glass.The tomb resembled nothing so much as amud-wasp's nest, high on a barn wall.The fact that it had never been brokenopen quite carried Wallace away with enthusiasm."This is no mean discovery, let me tell you that," he declared."I amfamiliar with the Aztec, Toltec and Pueblo ruins, and here I find nosimilarity.Besides, we are out of their latitude.An ancient race ofpeople--very ancient indeed lived in this canyon.How long ago, it isimpossible to tell.""They must have been birds," said the practical Jones."Now, how'd that tombever get there? Look at it, will you?"As near as we could ascertain, it was three hundred feet from the groundbelow, five hundred from the rim wall above, and could not possibly have beenapproached from the top.Moreover, the cliff wall was as smooth as a wall ofhuman make."There's another one," called out Jones."Yes, and I see another; no doubt there are many of them," replied Wallace."In my mind, only one thing possible accounts for their position.You observethey appear to be about level with each other.Well, once the Canyon floor ranalong that line, and in the ages gone by it has lowered, washed away by therains."This conception staggered us, but it was the only one conceivable.No doubtwe all thought at the same time of the little rainfall in that arid section ofArizona."How many years?" queried Jones."Years! What are years?" said Wallace."Thousands of years, ages have passedsince the race who built these tombs lived."Some persuasion was necessary to drag our scientific friend from the spot,where obviously helpless to do anything else, he stood and gazed longingly atthe isolated tombs.The canyon widened as we proceeded; and hundreds of pointsthat invited inspection, such as overhanging shelves of rock, dark fissures,caverns and ruins had to be passed by, for lack of time.Still, a more interesting and important discovery was to come, and thepleasure and honor of it fell to me.My eyes were sharp and peculiarlyfarsighted--the Indian sight, Jones assured me; and I kept them searching thewalls in such places as my companions overlooked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]