ABSENCE OF WATER. 



427 



and the ground of the courtyard sounded hollow. In 

 one place the surface was broken, and I descended into 

 a large excavation, cemented, which had probably been 

 intended as a granary. At the back of the courtyard, 

 on a high, broken terrace, which it was difficult to climb, 

 was another edifice more ruined than the others, but 

 which, from the style of its remains and its command- 

 ing position, overlooking every other building except 

 the house of the dwarf, and apparently having been 

 connected with the distant mass of ruins in front, must 

 have been one of the most important in the city, perhaps 

 the principal temple. The Indians called it the quartel 

 or guard-house. It commanded a view of other ruins 

 not contained in the enumeration of those seen from the 

 house of the dwarf; and the whole presented a scene 

 of barbaric magnificence, utterly confounding all previ- 

 ous notions in regard to the aboriginal inhabitants of this 

 country, and calling up emotions which had not been 

 wakened to the same extent by anything we had yet 

 seen. 



There was one strange circumstance connected with 

 these ruins. No water had ever been discovered ; and 

 there was not a single stream, fountain, or well, known 

 to the Indians, nearer than the hacienda, a mile and a 

 half distant. The sources which supplied this element 

 of life had disappeared ; the cisterns were broken, or 

 the streams dried up. This, as we afterward learned 

 from Don Simon, was an object of great interest to him, 

 and made him particularly anxious for a thorough ex- 

 ploration of the ruins. He supposed that the face of the 

 country had not changed, and that somewhere under 

 ground must exist great wells, cisterns, or reservoirs, 

 which supplied the former inhabitants of the city with 

 water. The discovery of these wells or reservoirs would, 



