While at Corralitos Mr. Davis told me of some ruins situated about halfway between his hacienda and Casas Grandes, near Barranca. I visited them next day, and found a very noticeable and well-defined road leading straight up a hill to a slight bench overtopped by a higher hill at the end of the bench. Here was an ancient ruin, built of stone, and looking very much like a position of defense. It may have been a sacrificial place, for otherwise I cannot account for the careful construction of the road. For defensive purposes it would not have been needed, especially one so well made; but observation has taught me that, when no other reasonable explanation can be found for doing a thing, superstitious or religious motives can be consistently introduced to account for it. This hill was really an outlying one from a larger near by and overlooking it. After climbing up the latter about halfway a series of stone buildings, not discernible from the bottom, were clearly made out. They encircled the hill, and about halfway between these and the top of the hill was another row of encircling buildings, faintly recognized by their ruins, although the masonry was of the best character. On the top of the hill was a fortification, with a well probably about twenty feet from the summit, overtopped and almost hidden by a hanging mesquite bush. At the base of both hills was a series of mounds extending as far as the eye could reach. I almost fear to place an estimate on their number, nor can I positively say they represented buildings at all. In all or nearly all other mounds there is some sign of the house walls protruding through the _débris_; here I found none, but they closely resemble the other mounds except in this respect. Everything goes to show that these people were on the defensive, and that defense was often necessary. The ruins looked very much older than any others I had visited, but that can in a measure be accounted for, I think, by the sandy character of the district. Nothing makes an abandoned building or other work of man look so antiquated as drifting sand piled up around it. This town, therefore, may have been contemporaneous with the ruined towns of the Casas Grandes valley generally, although the latter look much more recent from being built on more compact soil.