ompact every thing was. The estufa, or
place of council and worship, was built in close proximity to the other
building, and sometimes it formed part of it, and we do not learn that
there was any thing distinguishing about the apartments of the chief.
Further South a change is noticed. A specialization of structures, if
we may use such an expression, has taken place, and, among the Mexicans,
three kinds of houses were distinguished. It is extremely probable the
same classification could be made elsewhere. There was, first of all,
the ordinary dwelling houses. Every vestige of aboriginal buildings in
the pueblos of Mexico has long since disappeared, and our knowledge
of these structures can only be gathered from the somewhat confused
accounts of the early writers.

Many, perhaps most, of the houses had a terraced, pyramidal foundation.
Some were constructed on three sides of a court, like those on the
Rio Chaco, in New Mexico. Others probably surrounded an open court, or
quadrangle. The houses were of one and two stories in height. When two
stories, the upper one receded from the first, probably in the terraced
form. As serving to connect them with the more ornamental structures in
Yucatan, we are told they were sometimes "adorned with elegant cornices
and stucco designs of flowers and animals, which were often painted
with brilliant colors. Prominent among these figures was the coiling
serpent."<4> After pointing out, by many citations, that the evidence
always was that these houses were occupied by many families, Mr. Morgan
concludes, "They were evidently joint tenement-houses of the aboriginal
American model, each occupied by a number of families ranging from five
and ten to one hundred, and perhaps, in some cases, two hundred families
in a house."<5>

We can discern this kind of dwelling-house in many of the descriptions
we have given of the ruins in the preceding chapter. M. Charney
evidently found them at Tulla and Teotihuacan. Mr. Bandelier concludes
that similar ruins once crowded the terraces at Cholula, and that to
this class belongs the ruins at Mitla. The Palace, at Palenque, is
evidently but another instance, as well as the House of Nuns, at Uxmal.
In fact, with our present knowledge of the pueblos of Arizona, and the
purposes which they subserved, as well as the uses made of such houses
by the Mexicans, we are no longer justified in bestowing upon the
structures in Yucatan the name of palaces.

The mista