Chap. YII. RUINS OF CUARRA. 301 
a steep fall. Then succeeded fields of maize, in which the 
people were busied with the harvest ; and suddenly there 
stood before me some old and high walls of brown sand- 
stone, in the middle of a valley, between high poplars 
and pines, with a wooded mountain in the background. 
These were the ruins of Cuarra, which have without doubt 
a Christian origin, although, like many others in New 
Mexico, they have been attributed to the Indians. They 
consist of the walls of a church, built of sandstone without 
mortar. The builders were doubtless Indians, but the archi- 
tect, some missionary, must have had a Byzantine type in 
his mind when designing the building. The ruin has but 
little historic interest. Very probably the church, together 
with the other buildings of a flourishing mission, the walls 
of which still exist, was destroyed in the great rising of the 
Indians, when the Spaniards, after their first settlement in 
New Mexico, were driven out of the country, and had to 
conquer it a second time. At no great distance from 
Cuarra are the ruins of Avd ; said to be still larger than 
those of Cuarra, and doubtless connected with the same 
history. 
The site of Cuarra is remarkable : we seem transplanted 
into a mountainous corner of Germany, with the rains of 
some old robber-castle ; until, on closer examination, we 
are reminded of being in the land of the Cactus and of the 
Indians, and that the building was no castle, but a church. 
Cuarra has the rank of an Indian pueblo, but the number 
of the inhabitants is limited to a few families, who have 
used the old ruins as their dwelling. The pueblo erected 
on the ruins, after the destruction of the mission, has evi- 
dently never had many inhabitants, otherwise there must 
have been remains of a second period. The present tenants 
cultivate a few fields of maize and gourds, and keep a few 
