Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/553

Charles Dickens] alone mark the localities. It is impossible to travel more than a mile or two along the margin of the lowlands without encountering them, and one of our guides, who knew the round well, told me that at least one hundred thousand people must at one time have occupied this valley. The ruins follow the river quite to the mouth of the first cañon by which the Gila cuts through the Pina-leña mountains. In the cañada of Aravaypa, on the western side of this range, I examined the ruins of two pueblos, one being a fortification covering the top of a steep hill which guarded the entrance to the Aravaypa cañon. All along the San Pedro valley, through which Mr. Runk's party travelled for one hundred and sixty miles, ruined pueblos were frequently met with. Amongst them the remains of pottery, such as is in general use among the town Indians and Mexicans, were picked up in great abundance. Remains of acequias also were very numerous. Between Camp Grant, where I left my party to enter Old Mexico and the Pima villages, the mesas bordering on the Gila are pretty thickly studded with ruins, but further west than the confluence of the Rio Verde no more traces of pueblos are to be found.

Two good-sized ruins are situated near the Pima villages; one is known as Casa Montezuma, the other as Casa Grande. Casa Montezuma, also called Casa Blanca, consists of the remains of four large houses, one of which is tolerably perfect as a ruin. Around it are piles of earth, showing whore others had been, and although ten miles distant from the river, all the intervening space is intersected by acequias, and was no doubt once under cultivation. The chief ruin is four stories high, and forty feet by fifty wide; the walls face the cardinal points, and have four estufas four foot by two in size. The rafters inside had been almost entirely destroyed by fire, but as far as could be seen, they were very roughly hewn. The walls were built of brick, mortar, and pebbles, and were smoothed without and plastered within. The arrangements of the rooms, the presence of doors, and the absence of terraces, would lead one not to attribute this building to Aztec origin.

Casa Grande is situated a little below function of the Rio Verde and the Salinas; it is a rectangular ruin, two hundred and twenty feet by sixty-eight, whose sides face the cardinal points. The highest walls are, as usual, to be found in the centre of the pile, and they appear to have been three or four stories high.

Besides abundance of broken pottery, are found sea-shells, often pierced, and otherwise converted into ornaments, about the ruins which skirt the Gila and neighbouring streams, showing that these people must have had some intercourse with tribes living along the coast. These shells may have been brought by tribes inhabiting the Lower Colorado, across the Sonora desert, to exchange for food, clothing, and other Pima manufactures; but I think it most probable that the kindred race, the Papagos, the chief vendors of shells, for they are great traders, and wander through all Northern Sonora, from the Gulf of California to the Sierre Madre, and even now supply the scanty population of this region with sea-salt obtained from some salt lakes near the coast.

The Pimas themselves state positively, that at one time they were a great and powerful nation, living in houses similar to the ruins found on the Gila; but after the destruction of their kingdom they travelled southward, and settled in the valley, where they now dwell; fearing lest they should again become an object of envy to a future enemy, they were content ever afterwards to live in huts.

Lastly, I would mention one more cluster of ruins, which, although they are south of the boundary line of the United States, belong, without doubt, to the same class as those I have been considering; these are the Casas Grandes and Casa de Janos, situated on the Rio Casas Grandes, which flows northward into the Laguna de Guzman in North-western Chihuahua. The former, according to the historian Clavegero, is similar in every respect to the ruined fortresses of New Mexico, consisting of three floors, with a terrace above them, and without any entrance to the ground floor. The doors led into the buildings on the second floor, so that scaling ladders were necessary. A canal, says Dr. Wislizenus, conveyed water from a spring to this place. A watch-tower, probably Casa Janos, stands two leagues to the south-west of it, commanding a wide extent of country, and along the stream are many mounds, in which have been found earthen vessels, painted white, blue, and violet, weapons of stone, but none of iron. The following particulars are from Bartlett's personal narrative: "The ruins of Casas Grandes face the cardinal points, and consist of fallen and erect walls, the latter varying in height from five to thirty feet, projecting above the heaps of ruins which have crumbled to decay. Were the height esti-