236 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
together without nails. * * * Superb mats of most exquisite finish 
were spread upon the marble floors; the tapestry that draped the walls and 
the curtains that hung before the windows were made of a fabric most won- 
derful for its delicate texture, elegant designs, and brilliant colors; through 
the halls and corridors a thousand golden censers, in which burned precious 
spices and perfumes, diffused a subtle odor.”? 
Upon this rhapsody it will be sufficient to remark that halls were en- 
tirely unknown in Indian architecture. Neither a hall, as that term is used 
by us, has ever been seen in an Indian house, nor has one been found in 
the ruins of any Indian structure. An external corridor has occasionally 
been found in ruins of houses in Central America. The great doors open 
on the squares and streets; aztec window-curtains of delicate texture, 
marble baths and porticos, and floors of polished slabs of marble, as fig- 
ments of a troubled imagination, recall the glowing description of the great 
kingdom of the Sandwich Islands—with its king 
g, its cabinet ministers, its 
parliament, its army and navy, which Mark Twain has fitly characterized 
as “an attempt to navigate a sardine dish with Great Kastern machinery”; 
and it suggested also the Indian chief humorously mentioned.by Irving as 
generously ‘‘decked out in cocked hat and military coat, m contrast with 
his breech clout and leathern leggins, being grand officer at top and rageed 
Indian at bottom.”* Whatever may be said by credulous and enthusiastic 
authors to decorate this Indian pueblo, its houses and its breech-cloth 
people, cannot conceal the “ragged Indian” therein by dressing him in a 
European costume. 
On the seventh day afier the entry into Mexico, Montezuma was 
induced by intimidation to leave the house in which he lived and take up 
his quarters with Cortes, where he was held a prisoner until his death, 
which occurred a few weeks later. Whatever was seen of his mode of 
life in his usual place of residence was practically limited to the five days 
between the coming of the Spaniards and his capture. Our knowledge of 
oO 
o 
the facts isin the main derived from what these soldiers reported upon 
slight and imperfect means of observation. Bernal Diaz and Cortes have 
