HOLMES.) TEIPLE-WALLED TOWER, m'eLMO CREEK. 399 



ments or cells. Tlie walls about one of these cells are still standing to 

 the height of 12 feet; but the interior cannot be examined on account 

 of the rubbish which fills it to the top. No openings are noticeable in 

 the circular walls, but door-ways seem to have been made to communi- 

 cate between the apartments ; one is preserved at d. 



The inner wall has not been as high or strong as the others, and has 

 served simply to enclose the estufa. This tower stands back about one 

 hundred feet from the edge of the mesa and near the border of the 

 village. The smaller tower, b, stands forward on a point that overlooks 

 the shallow gulch ; it is 15 feet in diameter : the walls are 3^ feet thick 

 and 5 feet high on the outside. Beneath this ruin, in a little side gulch, 

 are the remains of a wall 12 feet high and 20 inches thick. The re- 

 mainder of the village is in such a state of decay as to be hardly 

 traceable among the artemisia and rubbish. The apartments number 

 nearly a hundred, and seem, generally, to have been rectangular. They 

 are not, however, of uniform size, and certainly not arranged in regular 

 order. The walls are marked by low lines of loose rubble which show 

 no stone in place, and I am inclined to believe that they have never 

 been raised to any great height. It is not impossible that they have 

 been, originally, of a species of rubble- masonry such as is seen in some 

 of the great casas farther south, and that these meagre remains are all 

 that is left of an imposing structure, but the total want of regularity 

 both in the form and size of the apartments seems inconsistent with, 

 such a conclusion. In reality they are more like a cluster of pens such 

 as are used by the Moqui tribes for the keeping of sheep and goats. 

 The site of this village can hardly have been chosen on account of its 

 defensive advantages, nor on account of the fertility of the surrounding 

 country. The neighboring plains and mesas are as naked and barren 

 as possible. The nearest water is a mile away, and during the drier 

 part of the season the nearest running water is in the Rio Dolores, 

 nearly fifteen miles away. To suppose an agricultural people existing 

 in such a locality, with the present climate, is manifestly absurd. Yet 

 every isolated rock and bit of mesa within a circle of miles is strewn 

 with remnants of human dwellings. 



PLATE XL. — RUINS AT "AZTEC SPRINftS." 



Another very important group of ruins is located in the depression 

 between the Mesa Verde and the Late Mountains, and near the divide 

 between the McElmo and Lower Mancos drainage. It is stated by 

 Captain Moss and others who have been in this locality that up to 

 within two or three years there has been a living-spring at this place, 

 and the spot has been christened by them Aztec Springs. 



The site of the spring I found, but without the least appearance of 

 water. The depression formerly occupied by it is near the centre of a 

 large mass of ruins, similar to the group last described, but having a 

 rectangular instead of a circular building as the chief and central struct- 

 ure. This I have called the upper house in the plate, and a large walled 

 enclosure a little lower on the slope I have, for the sake of distinction, 

 called the lower house. 



These ruins form the most imposing pile of masonry yet found in Col- 

 orado. The whole group covers an area of about 480,000 square feet, 

 and has an average depth of from 3 to 4 feet. This would give in the 

 vicinity of 1,500,000 solid feet of stone-work. The stone used is chiefly 

 of the fossiliferous limestone that outcrops along the base of the Mesa 



