Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/224

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164
HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

into adjacent apartments. The light is let in by a window two feet by eight inches on the north side."[1]

Mr. Jackson's study of the ruins enabled him to produce a restoration, which is given in his report, and of whose plate Fig. 37 is a copy. It is an interesting work, considered as a restoration, which can only claim to be an approximation. It will be noticed that three passage-ways were left open into the court, although the ground plan shows but one. In the Yucatan edifices, as the House of the Nuns at Uxmal, there is usually an arched gateway through the center of the building facing the court. The court was also open at each of the four angles, which, however, might have been protected by palisades in time of danger. The walls of the canon are seen in the background of the engraving.

Of this pueblo, Mr. Jackson remarks that "three hundred yards below are the ruins of the Pueblo del Arroyo, Fig. 38, so named probably because it is on the verge of the deep arroyo which traverses the middle of the cañon." This was given only a passing glance by Simpson, but it well repays more careful inspection. It is of the rectangular form, but with the open space or court facing a few degrees north of east. The west wall is two hundred and sixty-eight feet long, and the two wings one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and thirty-five feet, respectively; their ends connected by a narrow and. low semi-circular wall. The wings are the most massively-built and best-preserved portion of the whole building, that portion which lies between them and back of the court being much more ruinous and dissimilar in many respects. The walls of the south wing, which are in the first story, very heavy and massive, are still standing to the height of the third story. Many of the vigas are still in place, and are large and perfectly smooth and straight undressed logs of pine, averaging ten inches in thickness; none of the smaller beams or other wood-work now remains. There is one estufa thirty-seven feet in diameter in this wing. In the north wing the walls are standing somewhat higher, but do not indicate more than three stories, though there was probably another. The vigas of the second floor project through the wall for a distance of about five feet along its whole northern face, the same as in the Pueblo Hungo Pavie. There are


  1. Simpson's Report, p. 81.