en feet high, straight,
and about half an inch thick, having a yellow flower on the top, which
is a favourite food for horses. The stems, tied up in bundles three or
four inches thick, are used for torches. On one side of this field we
saw the high building before referred to, and on the other side was a
second not visible before. A bird which the doctor wished to procure
lighted on a tree growing upon the latter, and we went to it, but found
nothing of particular interest, and struck across the field of taje for
the former. This taje was as bad as the woods to walk through, for it
grew so high as to exclude every breath of air, and was not high enough
to be any protection against the sun.

The building stood on the top of a stony hill, on a terrace still firm
and substantial. It consisted of two stories, the roof of the lower one
forming the platform in front of the upper, and had a staircase, which
was broken and ruined. The upper building had a large apartment in the
centre, and a smaller one on each side, much encumbered with rubbish,
from one of which we were driven by a hornet's nest, and in another a
young vulture, with a hissing noise, flapped its plumeless wings and
hopped out of the door.

The terrace commanded a picturesque view of wooded hills, and at a
distance the Casa Grande, and the high wall before presented. They were
perhaps three or four miles distant. All the intermediate space was
overgrown. The Indians had traversed it in all directions in the dry
season, when there was no foliage to hide the view, and they said that
in all this space there were no vestiges of buildings. Close together
as we had found the remains of ancient habitations, it seemed hardly
possible that distinct and independent cities had existed with but such
a little space between, and yet it was harder to imagine that one city
had embraced within its limits these distant buildings, the extreme
ones being four miles apart, and that the whole intermediate region of
desolation had once swarmed with a teeming and active population.

Leaving this, we toiled back to our horses, and, returning to the road,
passed through the rancho, about a mile beyond which we reached the
pozo, or well, the accounts of which we had heard on our first arrival.

Near the mouth were some noble seybo trees, throwing their great
branches far and wide, under which groups of Indians were arranging
their calabashes and torches, preparing to descend; others,