[Illustration: Casa Grande of the Gila Valley. (As sketched by Ross Browne in 1863.)] Velarde has also cited the remains of similar structures at the junction of Salado and Verde and of the Salado and Gila.[453] We cannot refer to all of the remains reported in this region, especially since most of them are indescribable and shapeless heaps of ruins. One edifice, however, was observed by Mr. Bartlett, two hundred feet in length by sixty or eighty feet in width; and from the accumulation of debris, it is estimated that the edifice must have been three or four stories in height. This was but one of several similar heaps of ruins observed in the immediate vicinity. This locality, distant thirty-five miles from the river’s mouth, was evidently at one time the site of a populous city. The remains of numerous works, probably of a public character, such as irrigating canals—one of which is now more than twenty feet wide and four feet deep and several miles long, in the construction of which it was necessary to cut down the bank of the plateau—occur in considerable numbers. The whole region is strewn with fragments of broken pottery of fine workmanship.[454] M. Leroux, in 1854, discovered on the Rio Verde ruins of stone houses and regular fortifications which did not appear to have been occupied for centuries. The walls were of solid masonry of rectangular form, usually from twenty to thirty paces in length, and the style of architecture similar to that of the Casa Grande of the Gila. Still there was sufficient resemblance to the Pueblos of the Moquis to indicate a transition from the southern to the northern style of Pueblo dwelling. The sudden change in the material employed—that from adobe to stone in large blocks, well hewn—is rather remarkable. The ruins are found with more or less continuity between Fort McDowell and Prescott.[455] Mr. Bancroft, after citing the above, expresses regret at his inability to secure information in the possession of officers in the Arizona service.[456]