41.6 REPORT UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



habitations ; the quantity of pottery, domestic utensils, and arrow-points 

 helping somewhat to determine the length of time they were occupied. 



Crossing the mouth of the broad sandy wash of the Montezuma, which 

 is here bordered with groves of brilliantly-green cottonwoods along its 

 arid course, we pass about three miles below, and hnd camp under a 

 grove of patriarchal trees within a well-grassed bend of the river. A 

 wide gravelly bench, some 50 feet in height, and running back to the 

 bluff line, rises abruptly from the bottom-lands. A few rods below camp, 

 the river in its meandering sweeps close to the foot of this bench, pro- 

 ducing an almost perpendicular face. Upon the top of the bench at 

 this point, overlooking the river, are the ruins of a quadrangular struc- 

 ture of peculiar design. 



Eeferring to the ground-plan, as shown in Fig. 2, Plate XL VIII, we see 

 that it is arranged very nearly at right angles to the river : its greatest 

 depth is on the left, where it runs back 120 feet, the front sweeping back 

 in a diagonal line, so that the right-hand side is only 32 feet in depth. 

 The back wall is 158 feet long, and at right angles to the two sides. In 

 the centre of the building, looking out upon the river, is an open space 

 75 feet in width and averaging 40 feet in depth, its depressed centre be- 

 ing divided nearly equally by a ridge running through it at right angles 

 to the river. We judged this to have been an open court, because there 

 was not the least vestige of a wall in front or on the ridge through the 

 centre, while upon the other three sides the walls were perfectly distinct ; 

 although it is difiQcult to explain why it should have been hollowed out 

 in the manner shown in the plan, unless the depressions mark the former 

 sites of underground apartments. Back of this court is a series of seven 

 apartments of equal size, springing in a perfect arch from the heavy wall 

 facing the court, leaving a semicircular space in the centre 45 feet across 

 in its greatest diameter. Each apartment is 15 feet in length and the same 

 number of feet in average width across the centre; the walls are some- 

 what irregular in thickness, but average 20 inches, being compact and well 

 laid. On the left are three rooms extending across the whole width of the 

 building, each averaging 45 by 40 feet; on the right only one was dis- 

 cernible. Our impression was that back of the circle the walls diverged 

 in the manner shown in the plan, although there is so much confusion 

 resulting from the heaping up of the debris that much must be left to 

 conjecture. There is also some doubt in regard to the wall facing the 

 river on the right ; it is barely possible that it extended somewhat far- 

 ther out, and that it has become entirely obliterated by its foundations 

 giving way. The remains of the wall above, however, and the fact 

 that there is here a steep inclination to the brink of the bluff, led us to 

 believe that it had been originally built in the way it is shown in the 

 plan. Extreme massiveness is indicated throughout the whole struc- 

 ture, both by the amount of debris about the line of the walls, forming 

 long, rounded mounds, 4 to 5 feet high, and by the stone-work cropping 

 out, 20 to 24 inches in thickness. Portions of the outer wall have fallen 

 outward almost in solid pieces, the stones remaining spread out in much 

 the same order they occupied in the standing wall. The stones are of 

 fair size, but yet not so large but that one man can handle the largest 

 of them. They were obtained from the neighboring bluff, and probably 

 undressed, but broken into very nearly rectangular blocks, so that when 

 carefully laid and dressed up with adobe cement they would all have 

 the effect of dressed stone. Their extreme age, which has crumbled a 

 great many into dust and rounded the asperities of all into shapeless 

 bowlders, renders any conjecture upon this point somewhat uncertain. 

 Where portions of the undisturbed wall appear above the rubbish, it 



