434 KEPORT UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



Eeferring to the ground plan (Plate LV), which is the result of careful 

 measurements carried mainly over the floor of the second story, it will 

 be seen that the principal portion consists of an L shaped building, the 

 two wings of which, facing south and east within 20 degrees, measure 

 upon their exterior surfaces 238 and 174 feet. The extremities of these 

 wings are connected by a wall or row of small houses springing in an 

 arch from one to the other. Many of the small apartments in this row 

 have their walls so well preserved that they can be readily measured. 



Almost the entire area of the court thus enclosed, approximately 200 

 feet by 160 feet, presents a very irregular and broken surface, as though 

 it had been nearly all occupied by underground apartments, the roofs 

 of which falling in produced the great depressions and mounds which 

 now exist. The two outer walls, which are now standing in jDlaces about 

 30 feet in height, indicate an original elevation of at least 40 feet, un- 

 broken by any apertures excepting the smallest kind of windows. The 

 northern walls presents the largest unbroken surface. The northwest 

 corner and the western wall are much more broken down. The two 

 interior longitudinal lines of wall in both wings are intact throughout 

 most of their length to the top of the second and third stories, while 

 the wall facing the court barely extends up into the second story. In 

 the northwest angle of the court are two circular rooms or estnfas* the 

 best-preserved one of which is built into the main building and forms a 

 portion of it, while the other stands outside, but in juxtaposition, and 

 is evidently a later and less perfect addition. They are each 25 feet in 

 diameter. The inside walls are perfectly cylindrical, and in the case 

 of the inner one are in good preservation for a height of about 5 feet. 

 The bottom is filled with debris which must be of nearly the same depth. 

 Two counter-forts or pillars of masonry of the same character as the 

 rest of the room are built into the circular wall, bisecting it on a line 

 the continuation of which forms the inside front wall of the north wall. 

 They are 22 inches square, and extend aboilt 2 feet above the present 

 floor ] there are no indications in the wall that they had ever been much 

 higher. The outer estvfa is much more ruinous, small portions only of its 

 inner walls remaining intact. This has four equidistant counter-forts, 

 but they are placed diagonally with the square which encloses the circle 

 instead of at right angles to it, as in the case of the first one. Both 

 rooms are enclosed within squares, the space between the circular rooms 

 and the enclosing squares being filled in with solid masonry. The one 

 around the outer estufa is entirely ruined, while that about the inner 

 one is in very good preservation. There are no side apertures, so that 

 light and access was probably obtained through the roof. These estnfas, 

 which figure so prominently in these ruins, and in fact in all the ancient 

 ruins extending southward from the basin of the Rio San Juan, are so 

 identical in their structure, position, and evident uses with the similar 

 ones in the pueblos now inhabited, that they indisputably connect one 

 with the other, and show this region to have been covered at one time 

 with a numerous population, of which the present inhabitants of the 

 pueblos of Moqui and of New Mexico are either the remnants or the 

 descendants. Among the modern pueblos, some of these estufas are 

 either round or square subterranean rooms apart from their dwellings ; 

 while among others they are simply large rooms, not otherwise distin- 

 guishable from the living-rooms in the main body of the building. 



^Estufa is a Spanish word, the literal trauslation of which, as here applied, is a 

 sweat-house. This is true in but a limited sense. They are more properly council- 

 rooms, to which the men retire for deliberation, and for the observances of their pagan 

 religion. No name has been coined which better, expresses their character ; hence the 

 above has obtained general application. 



