MORGAN] NO CHIMNEYS IN BUILDING. 183 
of council, and for the performance of their religious rites, are still found 
at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There are six at Taos, 
three at each house, and they are partly sunk in the ground by an exca- 
vation. They are entered through a trap-doorway in the roof, the descent 
being by a ladder. 
Outside the front wall closing the court, and about thirty feet distance 
therefrom, are the remains of a low wall crossing the entire front and extend- 
ing beyond it. The end structures were about sixty-five feet long by forty 
feet wide, while at the center was a smaller structure, fifty-four feet long by 
eighteen wide. All its parts were connected. It was evidently erected for 
defensive purposes; but it is impossible to make out its character from the 
remains. One wing is several feet longer than the other, and the wall on 
the court side is about twenty feet longer than the opposite exterior wall, 
thus showing that they used no exact measurements. 
There were no fire-places with chimneys inthis structure. There are none 
in the ruins in Yucatan and Central America. It isa fair inference, therefore, 
that chimneys were entirely unknown to the aborigines at the time of their 
discovery. They have sincé that time been adopted into the old pueblo 
houses from American or Spanish sources. They are placed in one corner 
of the room. We saw recently at Taos two chimneys and two fire-places 
in one and the same room, one for cooking and the other for a fire to warm 
the room; proof conclusive that they were not to the chimney born. They 
were in an apartment of one of the principal chiefs 
In a number of rooms are recesses like niches left in the wall, about two 
feet six inches wide and high, and about eighteen inches deep. These fur- 
nished places to set household articles in, in the. place of a mantel or shelf. 
We afterwards saw niches precisely similar at Taos, and thus used. 
It remains to consider the number of rooms or apartments contained 
in this great edifice. It is plain that it was built in the terraced form, the 
second story set back from the first, the third from the second, and so on to 
the last, which was a single row of apartments, on the top somewhere, but 
not necessarily on the back side. Pueblos were not entirely uniform in 
this respect. The edifice at Taos recedes in front and rear and even upon 
the sides. This may have been built in the same way, but it can neither 
