Note XI-50 — Chapter XI · ANTIQUITIES OF ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO.

Dr Hammond, a companion of Simpson, describes this room as follows: 'It was in the second of three ranges of rooms, on the north side of the ruins. The door opened at the base of the wall, towards the interior of the building; it had never been more than two feet and a half high, and was filled two-thirds with rubbish. The lintels were of natural sticks of wood, one and a half to two and a half inches in diameter, deprived of the bark, and placed at distances of two or three inches apart; yet their ends were attached to each other by withes of oak with its bark well preserved. The room was in the form of a parallelogram, about twelve feet in length, eight feet high, and the walls, as they stood at the time of observation, seven feet high. The floor was of earth, and the surface irregular. The walls were about two feet thick, and plastered within with a layer of red mud one fourth of an inch thick. The latter, having fallen off in places, showed the material of the wall to be sandstone. The stone was ground into pieces the size of our ordinary bricks, the angles not as perfectly formed, though nearly so, and put up in break-joints, having intervals between them, on every side, of about two inches. The intervals were filled with laminæ of a dense sandstone, about three lines in thickness, driven firmly in, and broken off even with the general plane of the wall—the whole resembling mosaic work. Niches, varying in size from two inches to two feet and a half square, and two inches to one and a half feet in horizontal depth, were scattered irregularly over the walls, at various heights above the floor. Near the place of the ceiling, the walls were penetrated, and the surfaces of them perpendicular to the length of the beam. They had the appearance of having been sawed off originally, except that there were no marks of the saw left on them; time had slightly disintegrated the surfaces, rounding the edges somewhat here and there. Supporting the floor above were six cylindrical beams, about seven inches in diameter, passing transversely of the room, and at distances of less than two feet apart—the branches of the trees having been hewn off by means of a blunt-edged instrument. Above, and resting on these, running longitudinally with the room, were poles of various lengths, about two inches in diameter, irregularly straight, placed in contact with each other, covering all the top of the room, bound together at irregular and various distances, generally at their ends, by slips apparently of palm-leaf or marquez, and the same material converted into cords about one-fourth of an inch in diameter, formed of two strands, hung from the poles at several points. Above, and resting upon the poles, closing all above, passing transversely of the room, were planks of about seven inches wide, and three-fourths of an inch in thickness. The width of the plank was uniform, and so was the thickness. They were in contact, or nearly so, admitting but little more than the passage of a knife blade between them, by the edges, through the whole of their lengths. They were not jointed; all their surfaces were level, and as smooth as if planed, excepting the ends; the angles as regular and perfect as could be retained by such vegetable matter—they are probably of pine or cedar—exposed to the atmosphere for as long a time as it is probable these have been. The ends of the plank, several of which were in view, terminated in lines perpendicular to the length of the plank, and the plank appears to have been severed by a blunt instrument. The planks—I examined them minutely by the eye and the touch, for the marks of the saw and other instruments—were smooth, and colored brown by time or by smoke. Beyond the plank nothing was distinguishable from within. The room was redolent with the perfume of cedar. Externally, upon the top, was a heap of stone and mud, ruins that have fallen from above, immovable by the instruments that we had along. The beams were probably severed by contusions from a dull instrument, and their surfaces ground plain and smooth by a slab of rock; and the planks, split or hewn from the trees, were, no doubt, rendered smooth by the same means.' Hammond, in Simpson's Jour. Mil. Recon., pp. 131-3.