have been flaked off from the rock with little trouble, and have needed little dressing. The thick plaster coating is in some places still perfectly preserved.
From the position chosen, and from the fact that the buildings face inwards, it seems probable that each group may have formed a sort of fortress.
In one of the plazas I found the remains of a building, of which a rough ground-plan is here given:—
It is an oblong enclosure with walls 10 feet thick, with recesses at the four corners. The walls are in some parts perfect to the height of 7 feet. I could not find that there had been originally any doorway to this enclosure, but two entrances have been forced in where the walls are narrowest. It agrees in plan and dimensions with the building figured in Bancroft's 'Native Races of the Pacific States,' as a type of the Tlachtli courts of Mexico, where a game (which is described by Herrera and others) was played with an indiarubber ball.
There were numbers of Chaya (obsidian) flakes lying about on the surface of the ground, and I found one chipped arrow-head, one stone axe, and several pieces of stone axes and of mealing-stones.
Nothing beyond these few dry statements can be squeezed out of my note-book, and what little else is known can be gathered from the photographs and plans. An examination of the ruins on the neighbouring hill-tops would doubtless add much to our knowledge, and there still remains as a field for enquiry the whole of the forest-covered range of the Sierra de las Minas, which has not as yet been touched by the archæologist, and must almost certainly contain interesting ruins. The assertion is not mere guesswork, but is based on the fact that similar ruins are known to exist on the hills above San Gerónimo, and that I believe I gained touch of the same style of building at the ruins of Chacujal on the south side of the valley of the Polochic, which was a flourishing town when Cortéz visited it in the year 1526; it is not probable that the country between these sites was left uninhabited.
