Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/49

Rh other side a view is had of the little window that is opened on a cold or rainy day. The roof being flat, was constructed in a unique manner, having first heavy wooden beams laid across the top of each room, and then planks coated with pitch placed on these, after which twelve inches of mother earth were added; then a coating of gravel, and lastly one of cement, the whole making a roof impervious to rain or heat, and proving the admirable adaptability of Mexican architecture to the climate and the people.

The houses in general are provided with roofs of adobe, and some of the plainer ones in which I became a visitor, when the rainy season was at its height, gave me an amusing insight into the freaks and tricks of the "doby." as they are familiarly termed. When there were no frescoes on the cheese-cloth canvas, it would be taken down periodically, washed and then replaced as smoothly as a plaster ceiling. But woe betide the "doby" roof, when the rainy season makes its advent. The treacherous mud covering succumbs to the pressure of the driving water, and often the entire room or house is submerged in the twinkling of an eye. Besides the main leaks, numerous little bubble-like projections, like pockets, each filled with water, sagged down the canvas in various places. To my great amusement I found that my ingenious native friends had always on hand the essentials for stopping the leak, such as an old broom handle or strip of wood,