CASAS CASAS GKANDES 49 charge of forgery, left the English capital in a hurried manner. At Brunswick the prince of Prussia helped him out of a pecuniary diffi- culty. His rencontres with St. Germain con- tinued to be frequent and amusing. At Sans Souci he had an audience of Frederick the Great; at St. Petersburg, of Catharine II. Prince Adam Ozartoryski introduced him to the king of Poland. He returned to Vienna, but Maria Theresa would not receive him, and he departed for Spain. There his career forms a continued series of scandals and intrigues. In Barcelona he was put in prison, where he beguiled his time by writing Confutazione della storia del governo veneto d'Amelot de la Hous- saye (Amsterdam, 1769). After recovering his liberty, he betook himself in 1768 to Aix, where he met Cagliostro. But Casanova's ro- ving career was now drawing to its close. At a dinner of the Venetian ambassador at Paris he had met Count Waldstein of Bohemia, a good-natured man, and to escape from the dangers of his precarious position, he accepted the office of librarian in the chateau of the Bohemian count, where he spent the remain- ing years of his life. Casanova wrote a work on Polish history, translated the Iliad into French verse (4 vols. 4to, Venice, 1778), and was the author of an account of his imprison- ment, and various other writings, among which is Icosameron, ou Histoire d'Edouard et d'Eli- sabeth, a narrative of 80 years spent among the inhabitants of the interior of the globe (5 vols. 8vo, Prague, 1788-1800). But his literary fame rests upon his Memoires de ma vie jus- qu'en 1797, written during his residence in Bo- hemia (corrected ed., 8 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1830). CASAS, Las. See LAS CASAS. CASA SANTA. See LOEETO. CASAS GRANDES (Span., great houses), a town of about 4,000 inhabitants in Chihuahua, Mex- ico, on the Casas Grandes or San Miguel river, 35 m. S. of Llanos, which first became noted for ruined edifices, apparently relics of an aboriginal race. These ruins are found about half a mile from the modern town, partly on the declivity of a small hill, and partly on the plain at its foot. They consist chiefly of the remains of a large edifice, built entirely of adobe, or mud mixed with gravel and formed into blocks 22 in. thick and about 3 ft. long. No stone ap- pears to have been used in them, although the similar structures found in Arizona are entire- ly built of stone. The outer walls are almost all prostrate, except at the corners, and were probably only one story high ; the inner walls are much better preserved, varying in height from 5 to 50 ft., and being in some cases 5 ft. in thickness at the base. The central parts of these, like the exterior walls, have gen- erally fallen, leaving the corners towering above the rest. The portions remaining erect seem to indicate an original height of from three to six stories, but they are so much washed away that it is impossible to discover where the beams were inserted. The door- ways have the tapering form noticed in the ancient structures of Central America and Yucatan, and over them are circular open- ings in the partition walls. The stairways in Chihuahua were of wood, but in Ari- zona of stone. Clavigero, in his "History of Mexico," tells us that the building at Casas Grandes was erected by the Mexicans in their peregrination, and that it consisted " of three floors, with a terrace above them, and without any entrance to the lower floor. The door for entrance to the building is on the second floor, so that a scaling ladder is necessary." It is dif- ficult to form a correct idea of the arrangement of such an edifice, but its main features seem to have been three large structures connected by ranges of corridors or low apartments, and enclosing several courtyards of various dimen- sions. The extent from IS", to S. must have been 800 ft., and from E. to W. about 250 ft. A range of narrow rooms, lighted by circular House at Tewah, Arizona. openings near the top, and having pens or enclosures 3 or 4 ft. high in one corner, sup- posed to be granaries, extends along one of the main walls. Many of the apartments are very large, and some of the enclosures are too vast ever to have been covered by a roof. About 200 ft. W. of the main building are three mounds of loose stones, which may have been burial places ; and 200 ft. W. of these are the remains of a building, one story high and 150 ft. square, consisting of a number of apart- ments ranged around a square court. For some distance S. the plain is covered with traces of similar buildings, the nature of which cannot now be determined ; and for 20 leagues along the Casas Grandes and Llanos rivers are found ar- tificial mounds from which have been dug up stone axes, corn -grinders, and various articles of pottery, such as pipes, jars, pitchers, &c., of a texture far superior to that made by the Mexicans of the present day, and generally or- namented with angular figures of blue, red,
