f the village, placed in such a comparatively remote and inaccessible
position through an intensely conservative adherence to ancient practice
requiring this chamber to be depressed.

[Illustration: Plate XXXI. View of Shupaulovi.]

The general view of the village given in Pl. XXXI strikingly illustrates
the blending of the rectangular forms of the architecture with the
angular and sharply defined fractures of the surrounding rock. This
close correspondence in form between the architecture and its immediate
surroundings is greatly heightened by the similarity in color. Mr.
Stephen has called attention to a similar effect on the western side of
Walpi and its adjacent mesa edge, which he thought indicates a distinct
effort at concealment on the part of the builders, by blending the
architecture with the surroundings. This similarity of effect is often
accidental, and due to the fact that the materials of the houses and of
the mesas on which they are built are identical. Even in the case of
Walpi, cited by Mr. Stephen, where the buildings come to the very mesa
edge, and in their vertical lines appear to carry out the effect of the
vertical fissures in the upper benches of sandstone, there was no
intentional concealment. It is more likely that, through the necessity
of building close to the limits of the crowded sites, a certain degree
of correspondence was unintentionally produced between the jogs and
angles of the houses and those of the mesa edge.

Such correspondence with the surroundings, which forms a striking
feature of many primitive types of construction where intention of
concealment had no part, is doubtless mainly due to the use of the most
available material, although the expression of a type of construction
that has prevailed for ages in one locality would perhaps be somewhat
influenced by constantly recurring forms in its environment. In the
system of building under consideration, such influence would, however,
be a very minute fraction in the sum of factors producing the type and
could never account for such examples of special and detailed
correspondence as the cases cited, nor could it have any weight in
developing a rectangular type of architecture.

In the development of primitive arts the advances are slow and
laborious, and are produced by adding small increments to current
knowledge. So vague and undefined an influence as that exerted by the
larger forms of surrounding nature are seldom recognize