Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/773

Rh Some of them show hatchet-marks, where branches were lopped off. From this room the only means of exit, except the window by which it was entered, is a small hole in the ceiling, just within the entrance (Fig. 8, x), measuring thirteen by eighteen inches, and bordered by flat stones laid upon the reed layer of the roof. These stones are smoothly polished by the hands of the dwellers in passing back and forth, as this was apparently the only means of entering the seventeen apartments above it. The traveler in this region is quite certain of being entertained by exaggerated stories about gigantic human skeletons having been discovered in the ruined casas grandes; but if he be a good-sized man, and possessed of the usual amount of adipose tissue appertaining to the age of threescore years, he will become skeptical thereof when he comes to squeeze himself through the narrow portals of the ancient halls of Montezuma's Castle.

Except a store-room, another small room (Fig. 6, b), separate from the one just described, is all that remains on the first floor. It can only be entered through a small scuttle in the floor of the room over it (Fig. 8, t).

The first and second stories occupy an outer ledge, lower than the rest of the casa. The great outer wall of the upper stories (Fig. 8, c) is founded upon a ledge in the rear of the second floor, forming its back wall.

The second story is much more spacious than the first. The roof of the latter brings the building to the level of another ledge, which, extending laterally in each direction, serves as a floor for additional rooms. This story is composed of a tier of four rooms, bounded behind by the most massive wall of masonry in the whole casa, which, as previously stated, rests on a ledge even with the floor of the second story. This arrangement, besides giving more room to the stories above, secured the greatest amount of stability to this wall, which is the most important in the structure. It is twenty-eight feet in height, rising to the fifth story, around the front of which it forms a battlement four and a half feet high. It leans slightly toward the cliff, and is strongly curved inward, though not symmetrically. The chord of the arc described by the top of the wall measures forty-three feet, and the greatest distance from chord to circumference eight feet. As the wall is built against the cliff, there is no way of ascertaining its thickness at the bottom. It is fourteen inches wide on top.

The third floor (Fig. 9) comprises the most extensive tier of rooms in the structure, extending across the entire alcove in the cliff in which the casa is built.

The balcony above rooms C and D of the second story, as stated, had a battlement around it, which is still intact where supported by the wall of room G. A portion of the flooring has