144 THE CLIFF RUINS OF CANYON DE CHELLY (ETH. ANN. 16 
The ruin commands a fine outlook over the cove. The masonry is 
good, being composed of selected stone well chinked with small spalls, 
and sometimes with bits of clay pressed in with the fingers. 
Figure 47 shows a ruin located at the point marked 37 on the map. 
There is a high slope of talus here, the top of which is flat and of 
considerable area. 
The ruin is invisible from below in its present condition, but the 
site commands a fine outlook over several considerable areas of bottom 
land. The walls are now much obliterated and worked over by the 
Navaho, but the remains are scattered over quite an extensive area 
and may have been at one time an extensive settlement; however, no 
traces of a kiva can now be seen. Marks on the cliff show that some 
of the houses had been three stories high. Some places on the cliff, 
which were apparently back-walls of rooms, were plastered and coated 
with white, and there are many pictographs on the rock. The masonry 
is of fair quality, but the stones were laid with more mortar than usual. 
Figure 48 is a ground plan of a ruin which occurs at the point 
marked 46 on the map. It is situated in a cove in the rock at the top of 

Fig. 48—Plan of cliff ruin No. 46. 
the talus, 300 or 400 feet above the bottom, and immediately above the 
rectangular single room described and illustrated on page 15t. It com- 
mands an extensive outlook over the bottom lands on both sides of the 
canyon and above. The cove is about 40 feet deep, and, though so high 
up, has been used as a sheep close, and doubtless some of the walls 
haye been covered up. Four rooms are still standing in two little 
clusters of two rooms each. The wails of the rooms on the west are 
composed of large stones laid in plenty of mud mortar and plastered 
inside and out; those of the eastern portion were built of small stones, 
chinked but not plastered. One of the rooms is blackened by smoke 
in the corner only, as though there had been some chimney structure 
here, which subsequently had fallen away. The cliff walls back of the 
eastern part are heavily smoke-blackened; back of the western portion 
there are no stains. There is now no trace of a circular kiva, but there 
is a heavy deposit of sheep dung on the ground which might cover up 
such traces if they existed. This site commands one of the best out- 
looks in the canyon, but access, while not very difficult, is inconvenient 
on account of the great height above the bottom. 
