The “Estufa” of the Pueblos was no doubt, in the earlier ages of the tribal life, a communal dwelling similar to the “yourts” of the Siberians, like which it had but one large opening in the roof, for the entrance of members of the family, or clan, and the egress of smoke. An examination of the myths and folk-lore of Siberia might reveal to us the birth and the meaning of the visits of our good old Christmas friend, Santa Claus, who certainly never sprang from European soil. A god, loaded with gifts for good little children, could descend the ladders placed in the chimneys of “yourts” and “estufas,” but such a feat would be an impossibility in the widest chimneys ever constructed in Germany or England for private houses. The habitations of the natives of Ounalashka, according to Langsdorff, are made with the entrances through the roofs, precisely like those of the people of Kamtchatka.—(“Voyages,” vol. ii. p. 32.) The “Estufa” model was perpetuated in the Temples of India, exactly as the Imperial market-places of Rome supplied the type of the “Basilica” of the Christian Church. An article in “Frazer’s Magazine,” signed F. P. C., gives the dimensions of the great Snake Temple of Nakhon-Vat in Cambodia: “Six hundred feet square at the base, ... rises in the centre to the height of one hundred and eighty feet, ... probably the grandest temple in the world.... In the inner court of this temple are ‘tanks’ in which the living serpents dwelt and were adored.... The difference between these ‘tanks’ and the ‘Public Estufas’ is simply this: the latter are partially or almost completely roofed.” Some time after reaching the conclusion just expressed and much loss of study in a fruitless examination of Encyclopædias, which did not contain so much as the name of the patron of childhood, the work of Mr. George Kennan was perused in which the same views are anticipated by a number of years; it is by no means the least important fact in an extremely interesting volume. “The houses, if houses they could be called, were about twenty feet in height, rudely constructed of drift-wood which had been thrown up by the sea, and could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no doors or windows of any kind, and could only be entered by climbing up a pole on the outside, and slipping down another pole through the chimney,—a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath.