156 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
stratified below, constitute its enclosing walls.”'~ And Mr. Jackson, who 
entered it from the same point, remarks that “two miles from the river 
we descended into the canon of the Chaco. It is here only about fifty 
feet in depth, with vertical walls of yellowish gray sandstone.” At a 
point twelve miles down, at the Pueblo Una Vida, he remarks that ‘the 
canon is here about five hundred yards wide, and is perfectly level from 
one side to the other.”* Farther down the walls of the cation rise about a 
hundred feet, as appears in the restorations of the Pueblo Bonito and of the 
Pueblo of Hungo Pavie. Whether the cation is accessible or not from the 
table-land above over against the several pueblos, by means of the arroyos 
which break through the walls and enter the canon, does not appear from 
these reports; but it seems probable, Mr. Jackson says, that near the Pueblo 
Bonito he ascended to the top of the bluff by means of a stairway partly 
cut in the face of the rock.* 
Lieutenant Simpson, in his report, has furnished ground plans of five 
of these structures with measurements. Mr. Jackson has furnished eleven 
ground plans with measurements, two of which are without the canon. 
They agree substantially, but we shall follow Mr. Jackson, as his are the 
most complete. The following engravings, with two or three exceptions, 
are taken from his report. The remainder are from Lieutenant Simpson’s 
report. 
The great edifices on the Chaco are all constructed of the same mate- 
rials, and upon the same general plan, but they differ in ground dimensions, 
in the number of rows of apartments, and, consequently, in the number of 
stories. They contained from one hundred to six hundred apartments each, 
and would severally accommodate from five hundred to four thousand per- 
sons, living in the fashion of Indians. Speaking of the Pueblo of Pintado, 
Lieutenant Simpson remarks as follows: ‘‘Forming one structure, and built 
of tabular pieces of hard, fine-grained, compact, gray sandstone (a material 
entirely unknown in the present architecture of New Mexico), to which the 
atmosphere has imparted a reddish tinge, the layers or beds being not 
thicker than three inches, and sometimes as thin as one-fourth of an inch, 
it discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only 
1 Lieutenant Simpson’s Report, p.77. 2 Hayden’s Report, p. 436. %Ib., p. 437. 4Ib., p. 448, 
