In southern Mexico they erected extensive cities or pueblos because there they were more crowded together than anywhere to the northward, but these cities were essentially the same as the more simple towns in the northern country. At Tlascala “the houses were built, for the most part, of mud or earth; the better sort of stone and lime, or bricks dried in the sun. They were unprovided with doors or windows, but in the apertures for the former hung mats fringed with pieces of copper, or something which by its tinkling sound would give notice of anyone’s entrance. The streets were narrow and dark.”[208] This extract from Prescott might picture a New Mexican pueblo instead of one of the towns encountered by Cortez which have been often so romantically described. The copper on the mats was probably more for Amerind ornament than for the purpose stated by Prescott. While in some respects the Aztec towns may have been more elaborate than the New Mexican towns, there was probably not much difference in their method of construction. “The principal buildings and temples of the city were covered with a hard white stucco which glistened like enamel in the ... morning sun.”[209] This was perhaps a wash of gypsiferous clay similar to that used by the Mokis, or it may have been similar to the zahcab of the Mayas, which was a singular and abundant white earth used by them as a stucco. It was found in pockets. [Illustration: GROUND PLANS OF YUCATEC BUILDINGS W. H. Holmes ] “The dwellings of the common people were also placed on foundations of stone which rose to the height of a few feet, and were then succeeded by courses of unbaked bricks, crossed occasionally by wooden rafters.”[210] These rafters were the projecting ends of the poles, as in the Pueblo country. The adobe houses in Mexico are now often built on stone foundations, for it is the foundation that is sapped and undermined by the rains. The upper walls of adobe stand well in a climate of that sort. Prescott says of the houses of the “dignitaries” and of the “principal nobles” that “They were low, indeed; seldom of more than one floor, never exceeding two. But they were spread over a wide extent of ground; were arranged in a quadrangular form, with a court in the centre,”[211] all of which sounds suspiciously like a communal dwelling, as Morgan maintains the Aztec houses were. The Aztecs were crowded around the lake of Mexico, and also built out over the water on piles. Houses raised above the water or ground were nothing unusual in America. Some of the North-west coast Amerinds built dwellings which were “raised and supported near thirty feet from the ground by perpendicular spars of very large size” with “access formed by a long tree in an inclined position from the platform to the ground, with notches cut in it by way of steps about a foot and a half asunder.”[212] [Illustration: KWAKIUTL HOUSE FRONT The thunder-bird lifting a whale. The beak was carved and fastened on