Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/790

770 chinaware as to ostentation. The native pottery was hardly deemed sufficiently good for the banquettable.

The dwelling-houses on the plateau were usually of adobes, or sun-dried bricks, with a flat cement roof, containing one large room, sola, the general reception and living apartment, a bedroom, and a kitchen. The sala had seldom more than one paneless window, as a rule not toward the street, and this was generally closed with a shutter, so that light came from the door, which opened direct upon the street. While the walls shone with lustrous whiteness, the ceiling disclosed the bare beams, and the floor consisted either of cement or bricks. At one end of the sala extended a rough carpet, bordered along the walls with low cushioned benches, elsewhere a few chairs. In some of the corners stood small gilded tables supporting candlesticks and porcelain figures, and the walls were relieved with a few gaudy pictures or images of saints, the madonna figure with its burning light in front being accorded the place of honor.

Dwellings among the lower classes descended the scale until they reached the common standard in the hot region of a cane hut thatched with palm leaves and provided with a portico, but without windows, for the wide chinks between the canes of the wall admitted both light and air. Its one room served for the whole family, with pigs and poultry, and it was but occasionally that a partition appeared in one corner. The bed consisted of a rush or palm-leaf mat, sometimes raised on a framework of canes, on which the women would sit cross-legged during the leisure moments of the day. This and the earthenware, with the stone for grinding maize, and the saint images, comprised the furniture, for even a bench was deemed