118 THE CLIFF RUINS OF CANYON DE CHELLY (ETH. ANN. 16 
ledge near the mouth of Del Muerto, at the point marked 15 on 
the map. It is situated at the back of a considerable bay, directly 
opposite a large rock at the mouth of Del Muerto, and overlooked the 
whole of the bottom land in the bay. The houses were built on a 
bench or ledge, about 30 feet wide, overhung by the cliff above and 
dropping down almost vertically to the bottom land, about 40 feet 
below, but on the east access to the bench was easy by a slope of talus 
extending up to it. The site was covered with bowlders, and walls 
have been built over and under them. The masonry is good, and was 
composed of larger stones than usual, carefully chinked with spalls, 
the work being well done. 
There were but 10 rooms on the ground, in addition to one circular 
kiva; some of these rooms are too small for habitation, and one of 
them appears to have been a rectangular kiva. On the same bench, 
about 100 feet westward, however, there are traces of other rooms, the 
walls of which were very thin. The cliffs back of the ruin and for 200 
feet west of it are covered with pictographs in white and colors. 

Fic. 19—Ground plan of a ruin on a ledge. 
Near the center of that portion of the ruin shown on the ground 
plan there is a large room which may have been a rectangular kiva. 
The walls are over 2 feet thick in the first story, diminishing at the 
roof level by a step or setback to the ordinary thickness of about a foot. 
These walls, as usual in such structures, were about 2 feet thick; they 
are slightly curved, the front wall markedly so, and the interior corners 
are well rounded. No reason for this curvature is apparent, and it is 
certainly not dictated by the occurrence of the rock over which the 
wall is built, as only the point of this rock comes through the wall in 
the western side of the front wall. There may have been an opening 
into the room through the eastern wall connecting it with the room on 
that side, as the masonry is there broken down; but this is doubtful, — 
as the eastern room itself has no exterior opening. It is more probable 
that the large room was entered through the roof, for the thin wall of 
the second story shows in front one side of a well-finished doorway. 
Just outside of the heavy front wall there is a round hole in the 
ground, the remains of a vertical shaft connected with the interior of 
the room. The hole is about a foot in diameter, and is neatly plastered 
