Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/220

206 also given him. Of this village Casteñeda writes:

"The village of Cicuyé can furnish about five hundred men of war. ... It is built on a rock, and the middle is occupied by an open place in which are the estufas. The houses are four stories high, with terrace roofs, all of the same height, on which one can go around the whole village without stepping into a street. The first two stories have passages resembling balconies, on which one can go round the whole village, and where he can be under shelter. The houses have no doors below; one goes up to the balconies which are within the village by means of a ladder. All the doors open upon the balcony, which serves the purpose of a street. The village is surrounded on the outside by a low stone wall. There is also a spring there, which could be diverted. . . . Cicuyé lies in a narrow valley, in the midst of fir-clad mountains. A small river, in which very fine trout are caught, flows through the valley. Very large otters, bears, and good falcons are found there."

It is not necessary to compare this description with that of the Valley of Pecos and the present ruins of the former pueblo. Casteneda describes this pueblo so well and truly that when, after completing the measurement of the ruins in September, 1880, I restored the plans and afterward wrote them out, I perceived with astonishment that they exactly repeated the picture which the Spanish soldier had sketched three hundred years before. He was but little wrong even in his estimate of the population of Pecos-Cicuyé. Five hundred warriors represent among the Village Indians eighteen hundred inhabitants of all ages and both sexes. In the year