"Though this was their most usual style of architecture, there still exists a Pueblo of Taos, composed, for the most part, of but two edifices of very singular structure--one on each side of a creek, and formerly communicating by a bridge. The base story is a mass of near four hundred feet long, a hundred and fifty wide, and divided into numerous apartments, upon which other tiers of rooms are built, one above another, drawn in by regular grades, forming _a pyramidal pile_ of fifty or sixty feet high, and comprising some six or eight stories. The outer rooms only seem to be used for dwellings, and are lighted by little windows at the sides, but are entered through trap-doors in the _azoteas_ or roofs. Most of the inner apartments are employed as granaries and storerooms, but a spacious hall in the centre of the mass, known as the _estufa_, is reserved for their secret councils. These two buildings afford habitation, as is said, for over six hundred souls. There is likewise an edifice in the Pueblo of Picuris of the same class, and some of those of Moqui are also said to be similar."[13-*] The Indian city of Santo Domingo, which has an exclusive aboriginal population, is built in the same manner, the material being, as usual, sun-burnt bricks; and my friend Dr. Wm. Gambel informs me, that in a late journey from Santa Fé across the continent to California, he constantly observed an analogous style of building, as well in the dwellings of the present native inhabitants, as in those older and abandoned structures of whose date little or nothing is known.