EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMORANDUM &C. 15 



The town contained a vast number of houses ar- 

 ranged in rows, each dwelling was a heptahedron, 

 or to speak in more accurate terms a parallelopipe- 

 doid surmounted by a triangular prism, they were 

 built of clay squeezed into lumps and burnt, or of 

 stone and a kind of cement ; each house had one or 

 more holes in the top through which the smoke of 

 the fires escaped, assisted in its exit by a four-sided 

 tube, this is most decidedly a great improvement on 

 the contrivance used for a similar purpose in the 

 wigwams of the Pawnees ; holes were also made in 

 the walls to let in the light which kept out the cold 

 by being ingeniously covered with pieces of a trans- 

 parent vitrefaction. 



Among their public buildings was a sort of Cara- 

 vanserai which particularly attracted my notice from 

 its surprising extent and the similarity it bore in its 

 outward parts to the ancient temple-architecture of 

 the Greeks ; attached to this building is a place of 

 public amusement, not so large as the Coliseum at 

 Rome, and differing from it materially in having a 

 roof (which, by the bye, is very ingeniously made of 

 flat stones and thin bits of a metal found abundantly 

 in the country ;) I was told that horses, elephants 

 and other wild beasts had been in the habit of per- 

 forming dramatic entertainments in this building, 

 but as I never had the good fortune to be a spectator 

 I cannot say whether these performances were any 

 thing in the way of the exhibitions with which Titus 

 was wont to amuse his lieges. I have heard, how- 

 ever, that shortly after my departure from West 

 Barbary the inhabitants were nightly entertained by 

 more rational actors, i. e. by real men and women, 

 who under a clever Coriphseus, were in expectation 

 of giving satisfaction and obtaining generous patron- 

 age. 



One building pleased me very much, viz. a temple 

 dedicated to Minerva, where a few of the natives of 

 the town assembled, at certain seasons, to worship 

 that goddess. When it was represented to the 



