of the American Aborigines. io 
modern domicils, Mr. Gregg goes on to observe, that “a very 
curious feature in these buildings, is that there is most generally 
no direct communication between the street and the lower rooms, 
into which they descended from a trap-door from the upper story, 
the latter being accessible by means of a ladder. Even the en- 
trance at the upper stories is frequently at the roof. This style 
of building appears to have been adopted for security against 
their marauding neighbors of the wilder tribes, with whom they 
were often at war. 
“Though this was thesia most usual style of architecture, there 
still exists a Pueblo of 'Taos, composed, for the most part, of but 
two edifices of very singular structure—one on each side of a 
creek, and formerly communicating by a bridge. The base story 
is a mass of near four hundred feet long, a hundred and fifty 
wide, and divided into numerous apartments, upon which other 
tiers of rooms are built, one above another, drawn in by regular 
grades, forming a pyramidal pile of fifty or sixty feet high, and 
comprising some six or eight stories, ‘The outer rooms only seem 
to be used for dwellings, and are lighted by little windows at the 
sides, but are entered through trap-doors in the azoteas or roofs. 
Most of the inner apartments are employed as granaries and store- 
rooms, but a spacious hall in the centre of the mass, known as 
the estufa, is reserved for their secret councils. These two build- 
ings afford habitation, as is said, for over six hundred souls. 
There is likewise an edifice in the Pueblo of Picuris of the same 
class, and some of those of Moqui are. also said to be similar.”* 
- The Indian.city of Santo Domingo, which has an exclusive 
aboriginal population, is built in the same manner, the material 
being, as usual, sun-burnt bricks; and my friend Dr. Wm. Gam- 
bel informs me, that in a late journey from Santa Fé across the 
continent to California, he constantly observed an analogous style 
of building, as well in the dwellings of the present native in- 
habitants, as in those older and sheniones structures of whose 
date little or nothing is known 
- Who does not see in the biden of sini Seiki dwellings, 
the descendants of the architects of Palenque, and Yucatan? 
The style is the same in both. The same objects have been ar- 
rived at by similar modes of construction. The older structures 
* Sheretien ni F the Paine, p- 277... 
