The cut shows the ground plan of a round stone tower of peculiar form. The diameter is twenty-five feet, and that of the inner circle twelve feet,[XII-43] the walls being eighteen and twelve inches thick, standing in places fifteen feet high on the outside and eight feet on the inside. This tower stands in the centre of a group of faintly traced remains extending twenty rods in every direction. The stones of which it was built are irregular in size, laid in mortar, and chinked with small pieces. The cut presents a view of this tower. The next cut illustrates the small cliff-houses very common in the walls of the cañon. This and its companions are from fifty to a hundred feet above the trail; it is five by fifteen feet and six feet high, the blocks composing the walls being very regular and well laid. Some of these houses were mere walls in front of crevices in the cliff. So strong are the structures that in one place a part of the cliff had become detached by some convulsion, and stood inclined at quite an angle, taking with it a part of one of the walls, but without overthrowing it. Small apertures are so placed in all these cliff-structures as to afford a look-out far up and down the valley. Rude inscriptions are scratched on the cliff in many places, bearing a general resemblance to those farther south, of which I have given many illustrations.
Cliff-Dwelling—Mancos Cañon.
One of the most inaccessible of the cliff-buildings is shown in the cut. It is eight hundred feet high, and can only be reached by climbing to the top of the mesa, and creeping on hands and knees down a ledge only twenty inches wide. The masonry was very perfect, the blocks sixteen by three inches, ground perfectly smooth on the inside so as to require no plaster. The dimensions were about five by fifteen feet, and seven feet high. The aperture serving as doorway and window was twenty by thirty inches and had a stone lintel. Near by but higher on the ledge was another ruder building. These raised structures were invariably on the western side of the cañon, but those on the bottom were scattered on both sides of the river.
Cliff-Dwelling—Mancos Cañon.
On the bottom "the majority of the buildings were square, but many round, and one sort of ruin always showed two square buildings with very deep cellars under them and a round tower between them, seemingly for watch and defence. In several cases a large part of this tower was still standing." One of these typical structures is shown in the following cut. It is twelve feet in diameter, twenty feet high, with walls sixteen inches thick. The window facing northward is eighteen by twenty-four inches. The two apartments adjoining the tower, the remains of which are shown in the cut, are about fifteen feet square. They seem to have been originally underground structures, or at least partially so.