140 PUEBLO ARCHITECTURE. 
builders never attained to a full appreciation of the advantages and 
requirements of this medium as compared with stone. The adobe walls 
are built only as thick as is absolutely necessary, few of them being 
more than a foot in thickness. The walls are thus, in proportion to 
height and weight, sustained, thinner than the crude brick construction 
of other peoples, and require protection and constant repairs to insure 
durability. As to thickness, they are evidently modeled directly after 
the walls of stone masonry, which had already, in both Tusayan and 
Cibola, been pushed to the limit of thinness. In fact, since the date 
of the survey of Zuni, on which the published plan is based, the walls 
of several rooms over the court passageway in the house, illustrated in 
Pl. LXxx11, have entirely fallen in, demonstrating the insufficiency of 
the thin walls to sustain the weight of several stories. Y 
The climate of the pueblo region is not wholly suited to the employ- 
ment of adobe construction, as itis there practiced. For several months 
in the year (the rainy season) scarcely a day passes without violent 
storms which play havoe with the earth-covered houses, necessitating 
constant vigilance and frequent repairs on the part of the oceupants. 
Though the practice of mud-coating all walls has in Cibola un- 
doubtedly led to greater carelessness and a less rigid adherence to 
ancient methods of construction, the stone masonry may still be seen 
to retain some of the peculiarities that characterize ancient examples. 
Features of this class are still more apparent at Tusayan, and notwith- 
standing the rudeness of much of the modern stone masonry of this 
province, the fact that the builders are familiar with the superior methods 
of the ancient builders, is clearly shown in the masonry of the present 
villages. 
Perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic of pueblo masonry, and 
one which is more or less present in both ancient and modern examples, 
is the use of small chinking stones for bringing the masonry to an even 
face after the larger stones forming the body of the wall have been laid 
in place. This method of construction has, in the case of some of the 
best built ancient pueblos, such as those on the Chaco in New Mexico, 
resulted in the production of marvelously finished stone walls, in which 
the mosaic-like bits are so closely laid as to show none but the finest 
joints on the face of the wall with but little trace of mortar. The chink- 
ing wedges necessarily varied greatly in dimensions to suit the sizes of 
the interstices between the larger stones of the wall. The use of stone 
in this manner no doubt suggested the banded walls that form so strik- 
ing a feature in some of the Chaco houses. This arrangement was 
likely to be brought about by the occurrence in the cliffs of seams of 
stone of two degrees of thickness, suggesting to the builders the use of 
stones of similar thickness in continuous bands. The ornamental effect 
of this device was originally an accidental result of adopting the most 
convenient method of using the material at hand. Though the masonry 
of the modern pueblos does not afford examples of distinct bands, the 
ths 
