Some of these are yet perfect; others have wholly crumbled away except the rear wall.

From a distance the port-holes and indentations appear like so many pigeons' nests in the naked rock.

Together with the cavities formed by amygdaloid chambers and crevices caused by erosion, they give the cliffs the appearance of a huge, irregular honeycomb.
These ruins, inside as well as outside the northern walls of the canon of the Rito, bear testimony to the tradition still current among the Queres Indians of New Mexico that the Rito, or Tyuonyi, was once inhabited by people of their kind, nay, even of their own stock.

But the time when those people wooed and wed, lived and died, in that secluded vale is past long, long ago.

Centuries previous to the advent of the Spaniards, the Rito was already deserted.