trated one end of
the series is bounded by a board, all the other walls and divisions
being made of the usual stone slabs. The metates themselves are not
usually more than 3 inches in thickness. They are so adjusted in their
setting of stones and mortar as to slope away from the operator at the
proper angle. This arrangement of the mealing stones is characteristic
of the more densely clustered communal houses of late date. In the more
primitive house the mealing stone was usually a single large piece of
cellular basalt, or similar rock, in which a broad, sloping depression
was carved, and which could be transported from place to place. Fig. 106
illustrates an example of this type from the vicinity of Globe, in
southern Arizona. The stationary mealing trough of the present day is
undoubtedly the successor of the earner moveable form, yet it was in use
among the pueblos at the time of the first Spanish expedition, as the
following extract from Castaneda's account[9] of Cibola will show. He
says a special room is designed to grind the grain: "This last is apart,
and contains a furnace and three stones made fast in masonry. Three
women sit down before these stones; the first crushes the grain, the
second brays it, and the third reduces it entirely to powder." It will
be seen how exactly this description fits both the arrangement and the
use of this mill at the present time. The perfection of mechanical
devices and the refinement of methods here exhibited would seem to be in
advance of the achievement of this people in other directions.

[Footnote 9: Given by W. W. H. Davis in El Gringo, p. 119.]

The grinding stones of the mealing apparatus are of correspondingly
varying degrees of roughness; those of basalt or lava are used for the
first crushing of the corn, and sandstone is used for the final grinding
on the last metate of the series. By means of these primitive appliances
the corn meal is as finely ground as our wheaten flour. The grinding
stones now used are always flat, as shown in Fig. 105, and differ from
those that were used with the early massive type of metate in being of
cylindrical form.

One end of the series of milling troughs is usually built against the
wall near the corner of the room. In some cases, where the room is quite
narrow, the series extends across from wall to wall. Series comprising
four mealing stones, sometimes seen in Zuni, are very generally arranged
in this manner. In all cases suffic