A large number of ancient many-storied, many chambered communal houses are scattered over New Mexico, three of the most important of which are Isletta, Laguna and Acoma. Isletta and Laguna are within a stone's throw of the railroad, ten miles and sixty-six miles, respectively, beyond Albuquerque, and Acoma is reached from either Laguna or Bubero by a drive of a dozen miles. The aboriginal inhabitants of the pueblos, an intelligent, complex, industrious and independent race, are anomalous among North American natives. They are housed to-day in the self-same structures in which their forefathers were discovered, and in three and a half centuries of contact with Europeans their manner of life has not materially changed. The Indian tribes that roamed over mountain and plain have become wards of the Government, debased and denuded of whatever dignity they once possessed, ascribe what cause you will for their present condition. But the Pueblo Indian has absolutely maintained the integrity of his individuality, and is self-respecting and self-sufficient. He accepted the form of religion professed by his Spanish conquerors, but without abandoning his own, and that is practically the only concession his persistent conservatism has ever made to external influence. Laborious efforts have been made to penetrate the reserve with which the involved inner life of this strange child of the desert is guarded, but it lies like a dark, vast continent behind a dimly visible shore, and he dwells within the shadowy rim of a night that yields no ray to tell of his origin. He is a true pagan, swathed in seemingly dense clouds of superstition, rich in fanciful legend, and profoundly ceremonious in religion. His gods are innumerable. Not even the ancient Greeks possessed a more populous Olympus. On that austere yet familiar height, gods of peace and of war, of the chase, of bountiful harvest and of famine, of sun and rain and snow, elbow a thousand others for standing room. The trail of the serpent has crossed his history, too, and he frets his pottery with an imitation of its scales, and gives the rattlesnake a prominent place among his deities. Unmistakably a pagan, yet the purity and well being of his communities will bear favorable comparison with those of the enlightened world. He is brave, honest and enterprising within the fixed limits of his little sphere; his wife is virtuous, his children are docile. And were the whole earth swept bare of every living thing, save for a few leagues surrounding his tribal home, his life would show no manner of disturbance. Probably he might never hear of so unimportant an event. He would still alternately labor and relax in festive games, still reverence his gods and rear his children to a life of industry and content, so anomalous is he, so firmly established in an absolute independence.