Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/52

46 human hives seen to-day in many parts of China where families composed of hundreds of individuals are banded together for mutual protection under one roof, bearing one name. Their communism in living thus finds expression in their houses.

The dwellings of these communities were built on what is called the terraced plan. Imagine a house like a huge staircase, in which each story formed a step ten feet high. The whole interior was made up of numerous small square apartments, often arranged in pairs, having no connection with others, rising tier above tier, without any halls or stairways, each story being wider by one row of rooms than the one above it.

In ruins now existing in New Mexico it is evident that the inmates used ladders and trap-doors in the floor or ceiling when they passed from one story to another. Those who came into the house from the outside climbed to the roof of the first story by ladders, never entering, as we do, by doors on the ground-floor. These ladders were drawn up after the inmates were safely housed. The roof of the first story made a shelf on which to plant a ladder for climbing to the roof of the second, unless, as was sometimes the case, all the stories but the first had outside doorways. Each house had one or more rooms set apart as council-chambers for the clan or as places of worship. There must have been many dark rooms in such buildings, but these people lived in stormy times, and their houses were fortresses. The walls, both