Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/778

758 rough mortars, metates, and stone implements to be seen in the walls of the new acequia. The writer, whose appetite for discovery had been whetted by his surprising success when excavating in the high tier of cave-dwellings in the frowning cliffs of Clear Creek, eleven miles to the southeast, immediately commenced an examination of this majestic pile of ruined walls, forming a mound two hundred and eighty feet in length by one hundred feet in width, having an average depth of seven or eight feet. The walls are now standing to that height, the lower rooms being filled with the débris of the fallen upper stories. The building had been destroyed by fire, three layers of charcoal in the rubbish



corresponding to the roof and ceilings, which were evidently constructed of wood, reeds, and grass. Nearly all the inflammable materials had been destroyed, while many bone implements, and even some of stone, had been cracked and charred by the fire; and the greater part of the pottery, of which a large quantity was unearthed, had been broken by the fallen walls.

The labor of removing the débris from the rooms proved rather slow and difficult. As most of the pottery and implements