178 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
knowledge of the properties of quick-lime before they reached the idea of 
a true cement. The Spanish writers generally speak of walls of lime and 
stone, thus implying a mortar of lime and sand. Thus, Bernal Diaz speaks 
of the great temple in the Pueblo of Mexico as surrounded “with double 
enclosures built of stone and lime.”! 
Clavigero remarks that “the houses 
of lords and people of circumstances were built of stone and lime.”® Again, 
“the ignorant Mr. De Pauw denies that the Mexicans had either the knowl- 
edge or made use of lime; but it is evident from the testimony of all the 
historians of Mexico, by tribute rolls, and above all from the ancient build- 
ings still remaining, that all these nations made the same use of lime as all 
the Europeans do.”* In hke manner, Herrera, speaking of Zempoala, near 
Vera Cruz, remarks that the Spaniards, entering the town, found “the. 
houses [were] built of lime and stone;”* 
and again, speaking of the houses 
in Yucatan, he remarks that “at the place where the encounter happened, 
there were three houses built of lime and stone.”’ These several state- 
ments can hardly be said to prove the fact of the use of a mortar of lime 
and sand. Mr. John L. Stephens, in speaking of the ruins at Palenque, is 
more explicit: ‘‘The building was constructed of stone, with a mortar of 
lime and sand, and the whole front was covered with stucco, and painted.”° 
The back wall of the governor’s house at Uxmal is nine feet thick through 
its length of two hundred and seventy feet In this wall, by means of 
crowbars, ‘‘the Indians made a hole six and seven feet deep, but through- 
out the wall was solid and consisted of large stones imbedded in mortar, 
almost as hard as rock.”* At the ruins of Zayi, there was one row of ten 
apartments, two hundred and twenty feet long, called the Casas Cerrada, 
or closed house, because the core over which the triangular ceiling was con- 
structed had not been removed when the house was abandoned, of which 
Stephens says, ““We found ourselves in apartments finished with the 
walls and ceilings like the others, but filled up (except so far as they had 
1 The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, Keatinge’s Translation, Salem ed., 1803, vol. i, p. 208. 
*? History of Mexico, Cullen’s Trans., Phila. ed., 1817, vol. ii, p. 232. 
3Ib., vol. ii, p. 237. 
‘History of America, Stevens’ Trans., London ed., 1725, vol. ii, p. 266. 
5Tb., p. 112. 
© Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol. ii, p. 310. 
7Ib., vol. i, p. 178. 
