MORGAN] WOODEN LINTELS. 181 
of America, imperfect as.they are by contrast, are highly creditable to their 
intelligence. 
Stone lintels were not used for these doorways, as stones three feet 
long would have been required. No stones of half that length are to be 
seen in any of the walls. They had, however, the idea of a stone lintel, 
for they used them in this structure over the foot-square openings for light 
and air. We found a stone lintel over an opening eighteen inches wide in 
a cliff house on the Maneos River. This was so firmly imbedded that we 
found its removal impossible. They used fora lintel six round cedar cross- 
pieces, Fig. 42, each about four inches in diameter and now perfectly 
sound. 
In some of these doorways we noticed a peculiar feature. On the side 
toward the external wall, one and sometimes two of these wooden lintels 
were placed, four and sometimes six inches lower than the remainder, so 
that on entering from the outside room into the second room, the top of the 
doorway rose higher as the room was entered. <A necessity was experi 
enced to save the head from bumps, and the wonder is that it did not occur 
Fic. 42.—Section of Cedar Lintel. 
to them to raise the doorways to the height of the body. As the doorways 
were always open, no doors being used, it may well be that larger openings 
would have created stronger currents of air through the building than they 
wished. The ends of these lintels were hacked off by stone implements of 
some kind. 
The peculiar arrangement of the doorways tends to show that this 
great house was divided into sections by the partition walls extending from 
the court to the exterior wall; and that the rooms above were connected 
with those below by means of trap-doors and ladders. If this supposition 
be well founded, the five rooms on the ground floor, from the court back, 
communicated with each other by doorways. The four in the second story 
