The Native Races [of the Pacific States]., 4. köide

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A. L. Bancroft, 1886
 

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Page 587 - ... round like a spiral stairway ; and the Indians have, in some way, fixed logs of wood in the rock, radiating from a vertical axis, like steps. These afford foothold to man and beast in clambering up. "We were constantly meeting and passing Indians, who had their 'burros
Page 585 - Wherever the mountains did not impinge too close on the river and shut out the valley, they were seen in great abundance, enough, I should think, to indicate a former population of at least one hundred thousand ; and in one place there is a long wide valley, twenty miles in length, much of which is covered with the ruins of buildings and broken pottoni.
Page 587 - It is divided into four solid squares, having but two streets, crossing its centre at right angles. All the buildings are two stories high, composed of sun-dried brick. The first story presents a solid wall to the street, and is so constructed that each house joins, until one-fourth of the city may be said to be one building.
Page 395 - At different points toward the summit of the hill are three tanks, or reservoirs, one of which is sixty feet long, twentyfour feet wide, and six feet deep, with traces of steps leading down into it. In the walls traces of beams are seen, supposed by the explorer to have supported the scaffolding used in their construction. Besides the terrace walls, foundations of dwellings, and the remains that have been mentioned, there are also many ruins of statelier edifices, presumably palaces and temples.
Page 587 - This pueblo, like the others, has its two storied houses, accessible by ladders; but neither it nor Sandia is as purely Indian in the style of its buildings as the other pueblos we have visited. It is, however, rather a neat-looking village, the Roman 'Catholic church, as usual, showing conspicuously. The ruins of what is usually called Old San Felipe are plainly visible, perched on the edge of the...
Page 475 - As we descended, our guide showed us in the rock a large reservoir for supplying with water the palace, whose walls still remained eight feet high ; and as we examined farther, we found that the whole mountain had been covered with palaces, temples, baths, hanging gardens, &c.
Page 587 - ... 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...
Page 477 - city of signals,' and Toltecat are sometimes applied in the native traditional annals.76 These monuments stand on a plain which slopes gently towards the south, and are included in a rectangular space of about a third of a mile from east to west and a mile and a half from north to south, extending from the Tulancingo road on the north to the Otumba road on the south, with, however, some small mounds outside of the limits mentioned. By reason of its nearness to Mexico, Teotihuacan, like Cholula, has...
Page 190 - ... curious. And the construction of these ornaments is not less peculiar and striking than the general effect. There were no tablets or single stones, each representing separately and by itself an entire subject ,' but every ornament or combination is made iip of separate stones, on each of which part of the subject was carved, and which was then set in its place in the wall.
Page 587 - One of the northern forks of the Taos river, on issuing from the mountains, forms a delightful nook, which the Indians early selected as a permanent residence. By gradual improvement, from year to year, it has finally become one of the most formidable of the artificial strongholds of New Mexico. On each side of the little mountain stream is one of those immense 'adobe' structures, which rises by successive steps until an irregular pyramidal building, seven stories high, presents an almost impregnable...

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