Page:The Moki snake dance.djvu/47

 nightfall usually, and by morning it is well baked and ready to be wrapped in corn husks for consumption.

A stroll about a Moki town will convince the explorer that there are streets full of "surprises," as we call unexpected nooks and corners in our own houses. Just what the building regulations are no one has yet divulged, but the lay of the ground has much to do with the arrangement. Wolpi is crowded upon the point of a narrow mesa, and some of the houses are perched on the edge of the precipice, their foundation walls going down many feet, the building of which is a piece of adventurous engineering. Many of the towns have passages under the houses leading from one street to another. The stone surface of the street is deeply worn by the bare or moccasined feet of many generations. The trail over the dizzy narrows between Wolpi and Sichomovi is worn like a wagon track in places from four to six inches deep. The end of a ladder sticking up through a hatchway in a low mound slightly above the level of the street marks the way down into an underground