MORGAN.) HOUSES USUALLY TWO STORIES HIGH. 229 
three sides of a court, like those on the Rio Chaco in New Mexico, others 
probably surrounded an open court or quadrangle, like the House of the 
Nuns at Uxmal; but this is not clearly shown. The best houses were 
usually two stories high, an upper and lower floor being mentioned. ‘The 
second story receded from the first, probably in the terraced form. Clavi- 
gero remarks that ‘the houses of the lords and people of circumstance were 
built of stone and lime. They consisted of two floors, having halls, large 
court-yards, and the chambers fitly disposed; the roofs were flat and ter- 
raced; the walls were so well whitened, polished, and shining that they 
appeared to the Spaniards when at a distance to have been silver. The 
pavement or floor was plaster, perfectly level, plain, and smooth. * * * 
The large houses of the capital had in general two entrances, the principal 
one to the street, the other to the canal. They had no wooden doors to 
1 The house was entered through doorways from the street, 
their houses.” 
or from the court, on the ground-floor. Not a house in Mexico is mentioned 
by any of the early writers as occupied by a single family. They were evi- 
dently joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American model, each occu- 
pied by a number of families ranging from five and ten to one hundred, 
and perhaps in some cases two hundred families in a house. 
Before considering the house architecture of the Aztecs, it remains to 
notice, briefly, the general character of the houses of the Village Indians 
within the areas of Spanish visitation. They were joint-tenement houses, 
usually, of the American model, adapted to communism in living, like those 
previously described, and will aid us to understand the houses of the pueblo 
of Mexico. 
Herrera, speaking of the natives of Cuba, remarks that ‘they had 
caciques and towns of two hundred houses, with several families in each of 
them, as was usual in Hispaniola.”” The Cubans were below the Sedentary 
Indians. In Yueatan, the houses of the Mayas, and of the tribes of Guate- 
mala, Chiapas, and Honduras, remain in ruins to speak for themselves, and 
will form the subject of the ensuing chapter. On the march to Mexico, 
Cortez and his men, “being come down into the plain, took up their quarters 
in a country house that had many apartments.”* ‘‘At Tztapalapa he was 
y 
i History of Mexico, ii, 232. 2Tb., ii, 15. 21b., ii, 320. 
