400 REPOET UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



Verde a mile or more away, and its transportation to this place has 

 doubtless been a great work for a people so totally without facilities. 



The upper house is rectangular, measures 80 by 100 feet, and is built 

 with the cardinal points to within five degrees. The pile is from 12 to 

 15 feet in height, and its massiveness suggests an original height at 

 least twice as great. The plan is somewhat difficult to make out on ac- 

 count of the very great quantity of debris. 



The walls seem to have been double, with a space of 7 feet between ; 

 a number of cross-walls at regular intervals indicate that this space has 

 been divided into apartments, as seen in the plan. 



The walls are 26 inches thick, and are built of roughly-dressed stones, 

 which were probably laid in mortar, as in other cases. 



The enclosed space, which is somewhat depressed, has two lines of 

 debris, probably the remains of partition-walls, separating it into the 

 three apartments, a, b, c. Enclosing this great house is a net-work of 

 fallen walls, so completely reduced that none of the stones seem to 

 remain in place ; and I am at a loss to determine whether they mark 

 the site of a cluster of irregular apartments, having low, loosely-built 

 walls, or whether they are the remains of some imposing adobe struct- 

 ure built after the manner of the ruined pueblos of the Rio Ohaco. 



Two well-defined circular enclosures or estufas are situated in the 

 midst of the southern wing of the ruin. The upper one, A, is on the 

 opposite side of the spring from the great house, is 60 feet in diameter, 

 and is surrounded by a low stone wall. West of the house is a small 

 open court, which seems to have had a gate-way opening out to the 

 west, through the surrounding walls. 



The-lower house i« 200 feet in length by 180 in width, and its walls 

 vary fifteen degrees from the cardinal points. The northern wall, a, is 

 double, and contains a row of eight apartments about 7 feet in width 

 by 24 in length. The walls of the other sides are low, and seem to have 

 served simply to enclose the great court, near the centre of which is a 

 large walled depression {estufa B). No other ruins were observed in 

 the neighborhood of these, although small groups are said to exist 

 along the base of the Late Mountains, a few miles to the southwest. 



The dry, sloping plain between the Mesa Verde and the Rio Dolores 

 seems also to have been a favorite resort of the town-building tribes. 

 Numerous ruins occur along the borders of the caiions that drain into 

 the McElmo, and especially near the heads of these canons where 

 springs usually occur. 



At the south bend of the Dolores there are a great number of ruins, 

 many of which compare favorably with the lowland ruins farther south. 

 Dr. Newberry passed through this region in 1859, and his report* gives 

 a brief descriptioa of a few of these remains. 



I made a hasty examination of such of the groups as I had an oppor- 

 tunity to visit, but had no time to make plans. Other ruins, including 

 the remains of a large circular enclosure, occur on the river-bottom 

 about two miles below the bend. I also noticed the small cliff-houses 

 mentioned by Dr. Newberry, but did not visit them. West of the Do- 



* Macomb's expedition to the junction of the Grand and Green rivers, Washington, 

 1876. Dr. Newberry says : " The hill from which I obtained this view is crowned with 

 an extensive series of very ancient ruins. The principal one is a pueblo, nearly 100 

 feet square, once substantially built of dressed stone, now a shapeless heap, in which 

 the plan of the original structure can, however, be traced. Like most of the ruined 

 pueblos of New Mexico, it consisted of a series of small rooms clustered together 

 like cells in a bee-hive. Near the principal edifice are mounds of stone, representing 

 subordinate buildings. Among these are numerous large depressions marking the 

 places of cisterns or estufas." 



