ANCIENT DWELLINGS OF THE RIO VERDE VALLEY. 753 



Some of them show hatchet-marks, where branches were lopped 

 off. From this room the only means of exit, except the window 

 by which it was entered, is a small hole in the ceiling, just within 

 the entrance (Fig. 8, x), measuring thirteen by eighteen inches, 

 and bordered by flat stones laid upon the reed layer of the roof. 

 These stones are smoothly polished by the hands of the dwellers 

 in passing back and forth, as this was apparently the only means 

 of entering the seventeen apartments above it. The traveler in 

 this region is quite certain of being entertained by exaggerated 

 stories about gigantic human skeletons having been discovered in 

 the ruined casas grandes ; but if he be a good-sized man, and pos- 

 sessed of the usual amount of adipose tissue appertaining to the 

 age of threescore years, he will become skeptical thereof when 

 he comes to squeeze himself through the narrow portals of the 

 ancient halls of Montezuma's Castle. 



Except a store-room, another small room (Fig. 6, 6), separate 

 from the one just described, is all that remains on the first floor. 

 It can only be entered through a small scuttle in the floor of the 

 room over it (Fig. 8, t). 



The first and second stories occupy an outer ledge, lower than 

 the rest of the casa. The great outer wall of the upper stories 

 (Fig. 8, c) is founded upon a ledge in the rear of the second floor, 

 forming its back wall. 



The second story is much more spacious than the first. The 

 roof of the latter brings the building to the level of another ledge, 

 which, extending laterally in each direction, serves as a floor for 

 additional rooms. This story is composed of a tier of four rooms, 

 bounded behind by the most massive wall of masonry in the 

 whole casa, which, as previously stated, rests on a ledge even with 

 the floor of the second story. This arrangement, besides giving 

 more room to the stories above, secured the greatest amount of 

 stability to this wall, which is the most important in the struct- 

 ure. It is twenty-eight feet in height, rising to the fifth story, 

 around the front of which it forms a battlement four and a half 

 feet high. It leans slightly toward the cliff, and is strongly curved 

 inward, though not symmetrically. The chord of the arc de- 

 scribed by the top of the wall measures forty-three feet, and the 

 greatest distance from chord to circumference eight feet. As the 

 wall is built against the cliff, there is no way of ascertaining its 

 thickness at the bottom. It is fourteen inches wide on top. 



The third floor (Fig. 9) comprises the most extensive tier of 

 rooms in the structure, extending across the entire alcove in the 

 cliff in which the casa is built. 



The balcony above rooms C and D of the second story, as 

 stated, had a battlement around it, which is still intact where 

 supported by the wall of room G. A portion of the flooring has 



