330 PUEBLO OP TAOS. 



tured their pottery, lived their apparently objectless lives for hundreds of 

 years, seemingly with no ambition other than the privilege of existing. 

 They have not changed ; they are living proofs of the truth of the Spanish 

 reports concerning them over three hundred years ago. 



The same two principal houses stand which Vargas attacked in 1692, 

 in all their quaintness, built of adobe, or sun-dried bricks, five or six stories 

 high, each story receding the depth of a room, without doors, entered from 

 above by ladders; they are faithful witnesses of the lack of change in this 

 section, while ruins of similar edifices point to the great changes that have 

 taken place farther south in the Territory. 



We afterward passed through Picuris, an Indian town, dating back 

 probably as far as Taos; it is smaller and more squalid-looking, but as 

 intimately connected with Santa Fe's early history. 



[The pueblos of Taos and Picuris are on the eastern side of the Rio 

 Grande del Norte, in Northern New Mexico.] 



