Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/232

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166
HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

ends. The width of the rooms of each tier appears to have been constant throughout the length of the whole ruin. The dimensions given in these drawings are, in nearly every case, of those apartments which constitute the second story, as it is in those that there is the least obscuration of the walls.

"In most of the ruins the first floor is almost entirely filled up with débris, but when the ruins can be followed they show that this floor is generally divided into much smaller apartments, two or three occurring sometimes in place of each one above them. The eastern half of the ellipse, as above said, consists of a single continuous line of small apartments, with a uniform width of thirteen feet inside and an average length of twenty feet. By a curious coincidence the same number of rooms are in this row as in the outer tier of the main building. The walls of the central portion for a distance of about two hundred feet are in fair preservation, standing in places six to eight feet in height, the dividing walls showing apertures leading from one room to another. They are built of stones uniform in size, averaging six by nine by three and a half inches. Mortar was used between the stones instead of the small plates of stone. At both ends, for a distance of some two hundred feet from the point of juncture with the main building, the walls are entirely leveled, but enough remains to show the dimensions of each apartment. Twenty yards from the south end of the building are the ruins of a great circular room fifty feet in diameter, with some portions of its interior wall in such preservation that its character is readily discernible."[1]

Without the canon, upon the mesa, and about half a mile back of the bluff, upon the north side, are the ruins of the Pueblo Alto, constructed of stone on three sides of a court, like those before described. The main building is three hundred feet long, and one wing is two hundred feet measured externally from the back end of the main building, the other wing is one hundred and seventy feet measured the same way. This wing is but two rooms deep, while the main building and the other wing are each three rooms deep. It has six estufas, with remains of a convex wall, connecting the two wings, and inclosing the court. These estufas, like those in the


  1. Hayden's Tenth Annual Report, 1878, p. 446.