THE PUEBLO PINTADO 367 



face of the walls is as smooth as one built of brick and beautifully v>v»nbed. 

 At the base, 2J feet through, the wall at each story decreases in thickness 

 bv the width of a slight beam, on which rest the girders of the floor, the 

 larger ones setting in the wall. There are no doors opening on the side 

 away from the court, and the only means of light seem to have been 

 through the inner rooms, and through some small port-holes opening out- 

 ward on the stories above the first. There are no perfect arches found in 

 the building-; the only approach to such being the successive layers 

 over the windows, where the stones extend one beyond the other till one 

 stone can span the space. Usually the doors and windows were capped by 

 lintels of wood, which w r ere slight round poles, with their ends, as were those 

 of the girders, hammered off, apparently by some stone implement. In 

 one of the circular rooms was found what appeared to be an altar, built out 

 from the side of the wall in the very center of the building; it was probably 

 here that their worship, since lost or perpetuated in an altered form in the 

 present Pueblos, was carried on. 



The most striking peculiarities of the buildings were the wonderfully 

 perfect angles of the walls, the care with which each stone had been placed, 

 the perfection of the circular rooms as to their cross-section, and the great 

 preservation of the wood. With an architecture so advanced in other 

 respects, their glaring inability to tie joints in corners, each wall being 

 built lip against and not united with the others, makes it comparatively 

 weak; indeed, it is to be wondered at that the walls are still standing, 

 depending as they do each upon its own base, without abutments. 



Usually the Chaco is dry; doubtless at one time there was plenty of 

 water, for an apparent difference in the weeds and grass just above the 

 building indicates that the ground was once cultivated. We found no im- 

 plements other than a section of a metate, or hollow trough of stone, similar 

 to those now used by the Indians and Mexicans, in which they grind corn 

 and coffee. Innumerable fragments of pottery were found very similar, 

 although none perfect, to that made by the present Pueblo Indians. 



A few hundred yards down the stream, as also above the buildings, 

 are found traces of other buildings, with, in some cases, the outlines of the 

 walls easily distinguishable. In the canon, which commences less than 



