Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/55

in that mountainous country. Holes large enough for a living-room are found to-day dug out of the face of a precipice, and so high that in one case the mortar which was used in walling up the front of the excavation mast have been carried up four hundred feet. These retreats were generally in the most inaccessible places, where it would be difficult with all the skill of modern times to build fortifications. Water was sometimes led to these places by a secret pipe; others were supplied by cisterns. In a cemented tank which was recently found in one of these cave-dwellings at the North the print of a little child's hand is seen as plainly as if the small fingers had touched the soft plaster but yesterday. In some cases immense pine trees have grown up amid these ruins, showing how long ago they were forsaken by human beings.