FEWKES] ANTIQUITIES OF MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK 5 



and constructed by carrying the walls on both sides of the doorway nearer to 

 each other as each course of stones was laid, until they could be joined by a 

 stone slab placed across them. Along both sides of the doorway and under the 

 lintel a narrow frame of thin sticks covered with plaster was built (see fig. 28 

 to the left). This frame, which leant inwards, served to support the door, a 

 thin, flat, rectangular stone slab of suitable size. Through two loops on the 

 outside of the wall, made of osiers inserted in the chinks between the stones, 

 and placed one on each side of the doorway, a thin stick was passed, thus 

 forming a kind of bolt. Besides this type of door most clifli-villages contain 

 examples of another. Some doorways present the appearance shown in fig. 28 

 to the right (height 90 cm., breadth at the top, 45 cm., at the bottom 30 cm.) 

 They were not closed with a stone slab. They probably belonged to the rooms 

 most frequented in daily life, and were therefore fashioned so as to admit of 

 more convenient ingress and egress. The other doorways, through which it is 

 by no means easy to enter, probably belonged in general to storerooms or other 

 chambers not so often visited and requiring for some reason or other a door 

 to close them. It should be mentioned that the large, T-shaped doors described 

 above are rare in the ruins on Wetherill's JNIesa which both in architecture 

 and in other respects bear traces of less care and skill on the part of the build- 

 ers, and are also in a more advanced stage of decay, thus giving the impression 

 of greater age than the ruins treated of in the present chapter, though with- 

 out showing any essential differences. 



The rooms, with the exception of the estufas, are nearly always rectangular, 

 the sides measuring seldom more than two or three metres. North of the pas- 

 sage (23) which divides the ruin into two parts, a whole series of rooms 

 (26, 29-33) still extends outwards from the back of the cave, their walls 

 reaching up to the roof of rock, and the floors between the upper and lower 

 stories being in a perfect state of preservation. The lower rooms are generally 

 entered by small doors opening directly on the " street." In the interior the 

 darkness is almost complete, especially in room .34, which has no direct commu- 

 nication with ttie passage. It must be approached either through 35, which is a 

 narrow room with the short side towards the " street " entirely open, or through 

 33. We used 34 as a dark room for photographic purposes. 



The walls and roof of some rooms are thick with soot. The inhabitants must 

 have had no great pretensions as regards light and air. The doorways served 

 also as windows, though at one or two places small, quadrangular loop-holes 

 have been constructed in the walls for the passage of light. Entrance to the 

 upper story is generally gained by a small quadrangular hole in the roof at a 

 corner of the lower room, a foothold being afforded merely by some stones 

 projecting from the walls. This hole was probably covered with a stone slab 

 like the doors. Thick beams of cedar or pirion and across them thin poles, 

 laid close together, form the floors between the stories. In some cases long 

 sticks were laid in pairs across the cedar beams at a distance of some deci- 

 meters between the pairs, a layer of twigs and cedar bast was placed over the 

 sticks, and the whole was covered with clay, which was smoothed and dried. 



In several other parts of the ruin besides this the walls still reach the roof 

 of the cave. These walls are marked in the plan. In all the estufas and in 

 some of the other rooms, perhaps the apartments of chiefs or families of rank, 

 the walls are covered with a thin coat of yellow plaster. In one instance they 

 are even decorated with a painting, representing two birds, which is reproduced 

 in one of the following chapters. PI. x : 2 shows a part of the ruin, situated 

 in the north of the cave. The spot from which the photograph was taken, as 

 well as the approximate angle of view, is marked in the plan. The left half 

 of the photograph is occupied by a wall with doorways, rising to a height of 



