Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/554

544[May 8, 1869] mated from the foundations, it would be much greater, particularly of those of the centre part of the building, where the fallen walls and rubbish form a mound twenty feet above the ground. If, therefore, the highest walls now standing have their foundations on the lowest level, their probable height was from forty to fifty feet. I conclude that the outer portions of the building were the lowest, about one story high, while the central ones, judging from the height of the walls now standing, and the accumulation of rubbish, were probably from three to six stories. Every portion of the building is made of adobe, which differs from that now made by the Mexicans in that the blocks are very much larger, being fourteen or sixteen inches long, twelve wide, and three or four thick; the others are usually twenty-two inches in thickness, and three feet or more in length. Gravel was mixed with these large adobes, which greatly increased their hardness, but no straw was used. The building consists of three masses, united by walls of probably only one story, forming perhaps only court yards; they are now weather-beaten down to long lines of mounds.

"The entire edifice extends from north to south eight hundred feet, from east to west two hundred and fifty. The general character is very similar to Casas Grandes, near the Pima villages, and the ruins on the Salinas. Not a fragment of wood remains; many doorways are to be seen, but the lintels have gone, and the top has in most cases crumbled away and fallen in.

"Some of the apartments arranged along the main walls are twenty feet by ten, and connected by doorways, with a small enclosure or pen in one corner, between three and four feet high. Besides these, there are many other exceedingly narrow apartments, too contracted for dwelling-places or sleeping-rooms, with connecting doorways, and into which the light was admitted by circular apertures in the upper part of the wall. There are also large halls, and some enclosures within the walls are so extensive that they could never have been covered with a roof. The lesser ranges of buildings which surrounded the principal one may have been occupied by the people at large, whose property was deposited within the great building for safe keeping. Although there appears to be less order in the tout ensemble of this great collection of buildings than in those further north, the number of small apartments, the several stages or stories, the inner courts, and some of the minor details, resemble in many respects the large edifices 6f the semi-civilised Indians of New Mexico."

The builders showed much sagacity in their choice of so fine a region for agricultural purposes. There is none equal to it from the lowlands of Texas, near San Antonio, to the fertile valleys of California, near Los Angelos, and, with the exception of the Rio Grande, there is not one valley equal in size to that of the Casas Grandes, between those of Eastern Texas and the Colorado of the West. The water of the Rio Casas Grandes, unlike that of the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Colorado, is clear, sweet, and sparkling.

Not more than a hundred yards distant is another ruin, about fifteen feet square. Garcia Conde says that these edifices were known to have had three stories and a roof, with steps outside, probably of wood. Healos repeats the story of the Aztec emigration, and states that this was the third stopping-place of that people on their way from the north to the valley of Mexico.

I met with no Indian ruins in Sonora, nor have I heard of any other similar ones either there or in Chihuahua.

THE TUDOR SLIP-KNOT.

was not delicate of Henry the Eighth to call a lady whom he had induced to cross the sea, and marry him, a Flanders mare. Old Harry must have had experience in love-making before he made an offer of his hand to Anne of Cleves; yet he mismanaged, as his father's son should not have done. For when Henry the Seventh thought of taking a wife, whom he had not seen, he went about the business systematically. He sent envoys to Spain, where the young queen of Naples lived, instructed them to get an audience of her, and make full report to him, upon her skin, her hair, her eyes, her nose, her teeth, her lips, her hands, her fingers, and her breast. They were to get hold of her slippers, that they might judge of her real height, and see "the fashion of her foot." They were to make inquiries about her general health and diet. They were also instructed to come as near her in conversation as etiquette would permit, in order to feel if her breath were sweet.

Delicacy was not a Tudor virtue, when wives were in question. Of Henry the Eighth and his six wives I say only let them rest in peace. But King Henry's playful views of marriage were not confined to himself; they belonged equally to his friends and favourites, and tickled his two sisters, whose domestic history contained facts almost as peculiar in their way as any in the life of their more noted brother. Margaret, the elder, was first married to James the Fourth of Scotland, and after that king's death at Flodden, allowed herself to be wooed and won by Archibald, Earl of Angus. This alliance brought her