Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace — John Shaqi
Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff PalaceFewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Colorado -- Antiquities; Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.)
The descent to the ruin may be made from the mesa either on the
opposite side of the cañon, or on the same a few hundred paces
north or south of the cliff-dwelling. The Cliff Palace is
probably the largest ruin of its kind known in the United
States. I here give a plan of the ruin (Pl. XI) together with a
photograph thereof, taken from the south end of the cave (Pl.
XII). In the plan, which represents the ground floor, over a
hundred rooms are shown. About twenty of them are estufas.
Among the rubbish and stones in front of the ruin a few more
walls, not marked in the plan, may possibly be distinguished.
Plate XIII, as I have just mentioned, is a photograph of the
Cliff Palace from the south. To the extreme left of the plate a
number of much dilapidated walls may be seen. They correspond
to rooms 1-12 in the plan. To the right of these walls lies a
whole block of rooms (13-18), several stories high and built on
a huge rock which has fallen from the roof of the cave. The
outermost room (14 in the plan; to the left in Pl. XIII) is
bounded on the outside by a high wall, the outlines of which
stand off sharply from the dark background of the cave. The
wall is built in a quadrant at the edge of the rock just
mentioned, which has been carefully dressed, the wall thus
forming apparently an immediate continuation of the rock. The
latter is coursed by a fissure which also extends through the
wall. This crevice must therefore have appeared subsequent to
the building operation. To the right of this curved wall (still
in Pl. XIII) lie four rooms (15-18 in the plan), and in front
of them two terraces (21-22) connected by a step. One of the
rooms is surrounded by walls three stories high and reaching up
to the roof of the cave. The terraces are bounded to the north
(the left in Pl. XIII) by a rather high wall, standing apart
from the remainder of the building. Not far from the rooms just
mentioned, but a little farther back, lie two cylindrical
chambers (21 _a_, 23). The wall of 21 _a_ is shown in Pl. XIII
with a beam resting against it. The beam had been placed there
by one of the Wetherills to assist him in climbing to an upper
ledge, where low walls, resembling the fortress at Long House
(p. 28), rise almost to the roof of the cave. The round room 23
is joined by a wall to a long series of chambers (26-41), which
are very low, though their walls extend to the rock above them.
They probably served as storerooms. These chambers front on a
"street," on the opposite side of which lie a number of
apartments[9] (42-50), among them a remarkable estufa (44)
described at greater length below. In front of 44 lies another
estufa (51), and not far from the latter a third (52).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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