Someone—I think it was that picturesque historian of our Southwest, Mr. Charles F. Lummis—has summed up New Mexico as “sun, silence and adobe;” and of these three components the one that is apt to strike the Eastern newcomer most forcibly is adobe. This homely gift of nature—hard as brick in dry weather, plastic as putty and sticky as glue in wet—is the bulwark of the New Mexican’s well-being. His crops are raised in it; he fences in his cattle with it; he himself lives in it; for of it are built those colorless, square, box-like houses, flat-roofed and eaveless which, on our first arrival in New Mexico, we declared an architectural abomination, and within a week fell eternally in love with. An adobe house wall is anywhere from two to five feet thick, a fact that conduces to coolness in summer, warmth in winter, and economy at all seasons. Given possession of a bit of ground, you grub up a few square yards of the earth, mix it with water and wheat chaff, and shovel the mixture into a wooden mold. You then lift the mold and lo! certain big, brown bricks upon the ground. These the fiery New Mexican sun bakes hard for you in a couple of days—bricks that are essentially the same as those of ancient Babylon and Egypt, and the recipe for which (received by the Spanish probably from their Moorish conquerors) is one of Spain’s most valued contributions to America. Old Santa Fe was built entirely of this material, and most of latter day Santa Fe still is, though there is a growing disposition on the part of the well-to-do to substitute burned brick and concrete. As a rule these adobe dwellings are of one story, and the more pretentious are constructed partly or entirely about an inner court, such as in Spain is called a _patio_, but in New Mexico a _plazita_, that is, a little plaza. A cheerful sanctuary is this _plazita_, where trees cast dappled shadows and hollyhocks and marigolds bloom along the sunny walls. Upon it the doors and windows of the various rooms open, and here the family life centers. By the kitchen door Trinidad prepares her _frijoles_ and chili, while the children tease her for tidbits; upon the grass the house rugs and _serapes_ are spread on cleaning days, in kaleidoscopic array, and beaten within an inch of their lives; here, of summer evenings Juan lounges and smokes and Juanita swings in the hammock strumming a guitar, or the family gramophone plays “La Golondrina.”