186 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
3 feet 4 inches by 6 feet 6 inches, 4 feet by 8 feet 4 inches, 4 feet 7 
inches by 14 feet 2 inches, 6 feet 5 inches by 14 feet 9 inches, 7 feet 3 
inches by 16 feet 9 inches, 6 feet 4 inches by 11 feet 7 inches, 7 feet 3 
inches by 7 feet 5 inches, 8 feet 7 inches by 15 feet. Height of rooms, 8 
feet. The rooms were faced with stone laid up in the main in courses. 
They were small, from four to eight inches square, and the walls from two 
to three feet in thickness. Adobe mortar was used abundantly in the inner 
part of the wall, but not showing on the face at the joints, the stones being 
laid together as closely as the natural surfaces of the stone would permit, 
and without mortar near the edge. This feature was also characteristic of 
the walls of the pueblo first described. 
Mr. Bandelier made to me recently the important suggestion that as 
far as any progress or improvement in this architecture, in style or character, 
can be discerned, it seems to have been from smaller to larger rooms, fol- 
lowed by a reduction of the size of the house in ground dimensions. The 
last is more particularly illustrated by the houses in Yucatan, where single 
rooms are found, in rare cases, sixty feet long, but where the size of the 
house in ground dimensions is much smaller than of those in New Mexico. 
It was in consequence of an examination of some very old pueblo ruins in 
New Mexico, east of the Rio Grande, near Santo Domingo. There the 
pueblo was more like a cluster of cells than of rooms, as many of them 
were but four or five feet square, contrasting strongly with the present 
inhabited pueblos. The same fact may be seen at Taos. It was mentioned 
(p. 144) that the Taos Indians many years ago conquered and dispossessed 
the former occupants of a pueblo at this place, and that some remains of 
the old pueblo were still standing. In 1878 I visited one of the ground- 
rooms in the old structure still standing, and entirely alone. It was about 
five feet by six in ground-dimensions, and was then occupied by a solitary 
Taos Indian, a sort of hermit, as his place of residence. A bunk across 
one side furnished him both a bed and a seat, and the remaining room was 
scarcely suflicient to turn around in, but it gave him all the home he had, 
and, doubtless, all the room he needed Another room, a few feet distant, 
also a part of the old pueblo, was still standing. These rooms were of 
adobe, and were about six feet high. As the Indian gained in experience 
