Some twenty miles further south there are communal cave-dwellings, resembling those in Cave Valley, which were examined by members of the expedition at the San Miguel River, about eight miles above the point at which the river enters the plains.

Inside of one large cave numerous houses were found.

They had all been destroyed, yet it was plainly evident that some of them had originally been three stories high.
But the centre of interest is Casas Grandes, the famous ruin situated about a mile south of the town which took its name, and we soon went over to investigate it.
The venerable pile of fairly well preserved ruins has already been described by John Russell Bartlett, in 1854, and more recently by A.F.

Bandelier; a detailed description is therefore here superfluous.

Suffice it to say that the Casas Grandes, or Great Houses, are a mass of ruined houses, huddled together on the western bank of the river.