stratified below, constitute its enclosing walls."[1] And Mr. Jackson, who entered it from the same point, remarks that "two miles from the river we descended into the canon of the Chaco. It is here only about fifty feet in depth, with vertical walls of yellowish gray sandstone."[2] At a point twelve miles down, at the Pueblo Una Vida, he remarks that "the cañon is here about five hundred yards wide, and is perfectly level from one side to the other."[3] Farther down the walls of the cañon rise about a hundred feet, as appears in the restorations of the Pueblo Bonito and of the Pueblo of Hungo Pa vie. Whether the canon is accessible or not from the table-land above over against the several pueblos, by means of the arroyos which break through the walls and enter the cañon, does not appear from these reports; but it seems probable, Mr. Jackson says, that near the Pueblo Bonito he ascended to the top of the bluff by means of a stairway partly cut in the face of the rock.[4]
Lieutenant Simpson, in his report, has furnished ground plans of five of these structures with measurements. Mr. Jackson has furnished eleven ground plans with measurements, two of which are without the canon. They agree substantially, but we shall follow Mr. Jackson, as his are the most complete. The following engravings, with two or three exceptions, are taken from his report. The remainder are from Lieutenant Simpson's report.
The great edifices on the Chaco are all constructed of the same materials, and upon the same general plan, but they differ in ground dimensions, in the number of rows of apartments, and, consequently, in the number of stories. They contained from one hundred to six hundred apartments each, and would severally accommodate from five hundred to four thousand persons, living in the fashion of Indians. Speaking of the Pueblo of Pintado, Lieutenant Simpson remarks as follows: "Forming one structure, and built of tabular pieces of hard, fine-grained, compact, gray sandstone (a material entirely unknown in the present architecture of New Mexico), to which the atmosphere has imparted a reddish tinge, the layers or beds being not thicker than three inches, and sometimes as thin as one-fourth of an inch, it discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only
