Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/231

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MORGAN]
RUINS OF PENASCA BLANCA.
165

two estufas; one near the east end of the wing, which is twenty-seven feet in diameter, was three stories in height. The floor-beams are removed, but the remains show this plainly. The interior is nearly filled up, but it was originally over twenty-five feet in depth. The ruins of the other estufa are insignificant compared with this, and it probably consisted of but one low room. Facing the center of the court are remains of what were three circular rooms. At the end of the wings, outside of the building, are faint outlines of other circular apartments or inclosures, shown by dotted lines on the plan. In the central portion of the ruin, between the two wings, some rooms have been preserved entire. I crawled down into one of these through a small hole in the covering, and found its walls to consist of delicate masonry, thinly plastered and whitewashed. The ceiling was formed in the usual manner, fine willow brush supporting the earthen floor above, instead of the lath-like sticks or thin boards that were used in the exceptional cases noted.

Two miles below the Pueblo del Arroyo are the ruins of the Pueblo of Peñasca Blanca, Fig. 39. "This is the largest pueblo in plan we have seen," Lieutenant Simpson remarks, "and differs from others in the arrangement of the stones composing its walls. The walls of the other pueblos were all of one uniform character in the several beds composing it; but in this there is a regular alternation of large and small stones, which are about one foot in length and one-half a foot in thickness, form but a single bed, and then, alternating with these, are three or four beds of very small stones, each about an inch in thickness. The general plan of the structure also differs from the others in approximating the form of the circle. The number of the rooms at present discoverable upon the first floor is one hundred and twelve; and the existing walls show that there have been at least three stories of apartments. The number of circular estufas we counted was seven."[1]

"In point of size," Mr. Jackson remarks, "the rooms of this ruin will average larger than in most of the others; the twenty-eight rooms, as they appear on the outer circumference, average twenty feet in length from wail to wall inside. The smallest, which are only ten feet wide, are at the two


  1. Simpson's Report, p. 64.