Excerpt from The American Archaeologist, Vol. 2: Columbus, Ohio, January, 1898
I therefore offer to your readers simply my recollections of a visit paid to that desolate, enchanted region in February, 1894, with such observations and facts relative to the ruins and their surroundings that may not perhaps be familiar to the general public. Emerging from the narrow valley of the Rio Grande, anywhere south of Albuquerque, and proceeding eastward, we ascend to an arid plateau having an average width of twenty miles, and then hunt for a pass through the Cordillera that forms its eastern border with peaks of the Sandia, the Bosque, the Manzano, Oscura, etc., rising to an altitude of ten thousand feet. Having penetrated that rugged barrier we descend through pine-clad slopes and vales to the edge of the plains that extend, here and there wrinkled up into broken ranges of low mountains, through Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.
This vast, dreary expanse for more than a hundred miles is a hemmed-in basin, producing fine grass, but is almost waterless. Its few streams that flow at the spring melting of the mountain snows have no outlet, but sink in the thirsty sands. Proceeding from the foot hills of the Cordillera, around or over cut-off and detached ridges, we come to a chain of "ghastly white salines" that once were fresh water lakes, but are now dry beds of dirty salt. The topography of this basin is very peculiar. Extending from the Santa Fe mountains on the north to the Pecos eastward, and down to the Galinas, Corrizo, Blanca and other mountains far south and southeast, with the general conformation of a plain, its surface is corrugated by a labyrinth of disconnected ridges and abrupt unconnected valleys. As a landscape it has a strange, weird aspect - a death-like desolation. Along the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, among the broken, sparsely-wooded range of olden upheavals, were formerly a north and south line of Pueblos long since in shapeless ruins. The most prominent of these were Abo, Quarai and Tabira or Quivira, at points of a triangle distant from each other about thirty miles. The country here is much higher than that on the western side of the Cordillera, Quivira being 6047 feet above the ocean's level. The place is difficult of access, for until recently the nearest known water to it was thirty miles away, and the explorer had to carry not only provisions, but water for himself and animals. There is a lonesomeness about these silent, sandy valleys and rocky hills more cheerless than a midocean calm. But toiling along in discouraging silence the oppressive monotony is suddenly relieved by sight of the grand ruins of the church looming up ahead on the crest of the next rounded hill. (Fig. 1.) A writer in one of the popular magazines, * a few years ago, from this point of view thus gives his impressions: "I do not believe that the whole world elsewhere; nor that a Dore could dream into canvas, a ghostliness so apropos. Stand upon the higher ridges to the east and it is all spread before you, a wraith in pallid stone - the absolute ghost of a city. * * * * * * It seems the rightful home of superstition, and here the wildest myth need not be ill at ease."
It is now the same as it was then, and bids fair to remain for centuries more unchanged, a splendid monument, though in ruins, of the fanatical devotion of Franciscan Friars who here planted the cross three centuries ago.
Our positive knowledge of these forgotten towns, Quarai and Abo, belongs to that part of American history comprised in the years between 1540 and 1680. Forty-eight years after Columbus first saw the coral reefs of San Salvador, Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain, sent Coronado with his 260 Spanish cavaliers and twice that number of friendly Indians, to explore the then unknown country lying north of Mexico. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The American Archaeologist, Vol. 2