[Illustration: Figure 291. Plan of cavate lodges, group _D_.]
[Illustration: Plate XXXII. INTERIOR VIEW OF CAVATE LODGE, GROUP D.]
Aside from the actual labor of excavation, there was but little work expended on the Verde cavate lodges. The interiors were never plastered, so far as the writer could determine. Figure 291 shows the plan of one of the principal sets of rooms, which occurs at the point marked _D_ on the map, plate XXV; and plate XXXII is an interior view of the principal room, drawn from a flashlight photograph. This set of rooms was excavated in a point of the cliff and extends completely through it as shown on the general plan, plate XXV. The entrance was from the west by a short passageway opening into a cove extending back some 10 feet from the face of the cliff. The first room entered measures 16 feet in length by 10 feet in width. On the floor of this room a structure resembling the piki or paper bread oven of the Tusayan Indians, was found constructed partly of fragments of old and broken metates. At the southern end of the room there is a cubby-hole about a foot in diameter, excavated at the floor level. At the eastern end of the room there is a passageway about 2½ feet long leading into a smaller roughly circular room, measuring 7½ feet in its longest diameter, and this in turn is connected with another almost circular room of the same size. The floors of all three of these rooms are on the same level, but the roofs of the two smaller rooms are a foot lower than that of the entrance room. At the northern end of the entrance room there is a passageway 3 feet long and 2½ feet wide leading into the principal room of the set. This passageway at its southern end has a framed doorway of the type illustrated later.
[Illustration: Figure 292. Sections of cavate lodges, group _D_.]
The main room is roughly circular in form, measuring 16 feet in its north and south diameter and 15 feet from east to west. The roof is about 7 feet above the floor. Figure 292 shows a section from northwest to southwest (_a_, _b_, figure 291) through the small connected room adjoining on the south, and also an east arid west section (_c_, _d_, figure 291). The floor is plastered with clay wherever it was necessary in order to bring it to a level, and the coating is consequently not of uniform thickness. It is divided into sections by low ridges of clay as shown in the plan and sections; the northern section is a few inches higher than the other. Extending through the clay finish of the floor and into the rock beneath there are four pits, indicated on the plan by round spots. The largest of these, situated opposite the northern door, was a fire hole or pit about 18 inches in diameter at the floor level, of an inverted conical shape, about 10 inches in depth, and plastered inside with clay inlaid with fragments of pottery placed as closely together as their shape would permit. The other pits are smaller; one located near the southeastern corner of the room is about 6 inches in diameter and the same in depth, while the others are mere depressions in the floor, in shape like the small paint mortars used by the Pueblos.