Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/771

Rh and more nearly perfect building near the same locality, which an old settler had found many years ago. There are many others on Beaver Creek, and in the "box cañons" of the Upper and Lower Verde.

The building known as "Montezuma's Castle," on the right bank of Beaver Creek, in sight of and three miles from Fort Verde, is (perhaps excepting a building near Salt River) the finest that I have seen, and typical of this class of structures. This casa, doubtless a fortress, is fitted into a natural depression, high up in a vertical limestone cliff, the base of which is distant three hundred and forty-eight feet from the edge of the stream and about forty feet above it. The casa is accessible only by means of ladders, its lowest foundations being forty-two feet above the bottom of the cliff. The post quartermaster of Fort Verde has provided four substantial wooden ones, which make the ascent easy from one narrow ledge to the next. After ascending three ladders a ledge is reached upon which six cave-rooms open (Fig. 3).

On a ledge eight feet below this one, and eighty feet to the northeast, are two cave-dwellings, neatly walled up in front, with a well-made window in each for entrance. There are many other cave-dwellings in the cliff, at either side of the casa, long lines of them extending toward the southwest. One or two isolated chambers, walled in front and windowed, may be seen far up the side of the cliff, where they are altogether inaccessible. These, together, constituted the settlement.

Ascending the fourth ladder (Fig. 6, z), the casa is reached. The foundation rests upon cedar timbers laid longitudinally upon flat stones on the ledge. The projecting ends of these timbers show plainly the marks of stone axes used in cutting them. The front wall (Fig. 4, a b) is a little over two feet wide at the bottom and thirteen inches wide at the top. It leans slightly in toward the cliff. One part of this wall (Fig. 5) rests on what appears to be a very precarious footing, although it has stood for centuries. The timbers are so placed that in the middle they project beyond the edge of the ledge.

The casa is entered at a projecting angle (Fig. 6, c), through a window of sub-Gothic form (Fig. 7), measuring three feet and three inches in height by two feet and four inches in width at the bottom. This small apartment (Fig. 6, a) is smoothly plastered within, and blackened by fire. The plastering bears fingermarks and impressions of the thumb and hand, showing that it was laid on and smoothed by the hands. The roof is formed by willows laid horizontally across eleven rafters of ash and black alder; upon this a thick layer of reeds is placed transversely, and the whole plastered on top with mortar, forming a floor to the chamber above it. The rafters are peeled, except one or two that