202 NEW TEACKS IN NOETH AMBEICA. 



" Some of tlie apartments arranged along tlie main walls 

 are 20 feet by 10, and connected by doorways, with a 

 small enclosure or pen in one corner, between 3 and 4 

 feet high. Besides these there are many other exceedingly 

 narrow apartments, too contracted for dwelling-places or 

 sleeping-rooms, with connecting doorways, and into which 

 the light was admitted by circular apertures in the upper 

 part of the wall. There are also large halls, and some 

 enclosures within the walls are so extensive that they could 

 never have been covered with a roof. The lesser ranges of 

 buildings which surrounded the principal one may have been 

 occupied by the people at large, whose property was deposited 

 within the great building for safe keeping. Although there 

 appears to be less order in the tout ensemble of this great 

 collection of buildings than in those further north, the 

 number of small apartments, the several stages or stories, 

 the inner courts, and some of the minor details, resemble in 

 many respects the large edifices of the semi-civilised Indians 

 of ^ew Mexico." 



The builders showed much sagacity in their choice of so 

 fine a region for agricultural purposes. There is none equal 

 to it from the lowlands of Texas, near San Antonio, to the 

 fertile valleys of California, near Los Angelos ; and with the 

 exception of the Rio Grande, there is not one valley equal in 

 size to that of the Casas Grandes, between those of Eastern 

 Texas and the Colorado of the West. The water of the Eio 

 Casas Grandes, unlike that of the Eio Grande, Pecos, and 

 Colorado, is clear, sweet, and sparkling. Not more than one 

 hundred yards' distance is another ruin, about 15 feet 

 square. Garcia Conde says that these edifices were known 

 to have had three stories and a roof, with steps outside, 

 probably of wood. Healos repeats the story of the Aztec 



