ied
mud with its roof, walls and floor all made of dirt. It is never free
from a disagreeable earthy smell which, if mingled with the added odors
of stale smoke and filth, as is often the case, makes the air simply
vile. The house can never be kept tidy because of the dirt which falls
from the adobe, unless the walls and ceilings are plastered and
whitewashed, which is sometimes done in the better class of houses. If
the house is well built it is comfortable enough in pleasant weather,
but as often as it rains the dirt roof springs a leak and splashes
water and mud over everything. If by chance the house stands on low
ground and is surrounded by water, as sometimes happens, after a heavy
rain the walls become soaked and dissolved into mud when the house
collapses. The adobe house may have been suited to the wants of a
primitive people, but in the present age of improvement, it is scarcely
worth saving except it be as a relic of a vanishing race.

In order to escape in a measure the discomforts of the midday heat the
natives either seek the shade in the open air where the breeze blows,
or, what is more common, close up tight the adobe house in the morning
and remain indoors until the intense heat from the scorching sun
penetrates the thick walls, which causes the inmates to move out. In
the cool of the evening they visit and transact business and when the
hour comes for retiring go to bed on cots made up out of doors where
they sleep until morning, while the house is left open to cool off
during the night. This process is repeated every day during the hot
summer months and is endured without complaint.

The natives, also, take advantage of the dry air to operate a novel
method of refrigeration. The cloth covered army canteen soaked in
water and the handy water jug of the eastern harvest field wrapped in a
wet blanket are familiar examples of an ineffectual attempt at
refrigeration by evaporation. But natural refrigeration find its best
illustration in the arid regions of the southwest by the use of an
olla, which is a vessel made of porous pottery, a stout canvas bag or a
closely woven Indian basket. A suitable vessel is selected, filled
with water and suspended somewhere in midair in the shade. If it is
hung in a current of air it is all the better, as any movement of the
atmosphere facilitates evaporation. A slow seepage of water filters
through the open pores of the vessel which immediately evaporates in