others large and rectangular, inclosing a space thirty by ten feet.

From an archaeological point of view, the district we now found
ourselves in is exceedingly rich, and I determined to explore it as
thoroughly as circumstances permitted. One can easily count, in the
vicinity of San Diego, over fifty mounds, and there are also rock
carvings and paintings in various places. Some twenty miles further
south there are communal cave-dwellings, resembling those in Cave
Valley, which were examined by members of the expedition at the San
Miguel River, about eight miles above the point at which the river
enters the plains. Inside of one large cave numerous houses were
found. They had all been destroyed, yet it was plainly evident that
some of them had originally been three stories high.

But the centre of interest is Casas Grandes, the famous ruin situated
about a mile south of the town which took its name, and we soon went
over to investigate it.

The venerable pile of fairly well preserved ruins has already been
described by John Russell Bartlett, in 1854, and more recently
by A. F. Bandelier; a detailed description is therefore here
superfluous. Suffice it to say that the Casas Grandes, or Great Houses,
are a mass of ruined houses, huddled together on the western bank
of the river. Most of the buildings have fallen in and form six or
eight large mounds, the highest of which is about twenty feet above
the ground. Low mesquite bushes have taken root along the mounds
and between the ruins. The remaining walls are sufficiently well
preserved to give us an idea of the mode of building employed by the
ancients. At the outskirts of the ruined village the houses are lower
and have only one story, while in its central part they must have been
at one time at least four stories high. They were not palaces, but
simply dwellings, and the whole village, which probably once housed
3,000 or 4,000 people, resembles, in its general characteristics,
the pueblos in the Southwest, and, for that matter, the houses we
excavated from the mounds. The only features that distinguish these
from either of the other structures are the immense thickness of the
walls, which reaches as much as five feet, and the great height of the
buildings. The material, too, is different, consisting of enormous
bricks made of mud mixed with coarse gravel, and formed in baskets
or boxes.

A striking fact is that the houses apparently are not arranged in
accordance