continual sandstorms. It is
believed that more than 1,000 people lived in this one house.

Of recent years a good deal has been written concerning the
possibilities of the future in regard to saving expense by large numbers
of families occupying one house. Most of these ideas have been
ridiculed, because experience has proved that families seldom reside
comfortably in crowded quarters. The tribes of which we are writing,
while they destroy the originality of the communistic ideas of the
Nineteenth Century, also disprove the arguments which are principally
brought against them. In these singular houses or colonies, several
families live together in perfect harmony. There are no instances on
record of disputes such as are met with in boarding-houses patronized by
white people, and in this one respect, at any rate, quite a lesson is
taught us by the Pueblo tribes. The people are quiet and peaceable in
disposition, and one secret of their peaceful dwelling together is found
in the absence of jealousy, a characteristic or vice which does not seem
to have penetrated into the houses on the cliffs, or to have sullied the
dispositions of these people with such a remarkable and creditable
history. It requires a good deal of dexterity and agility to enter or
leave a communal house of this character, and a door, from what we are
apt to term a civilized point of view, is unknown.

The visitor is told a number of legends and stories about these houses
and the people who live in them. The coming of Montezuma is the great
idea which permeates all the legends and stories. According to many of
the people, Montezuma left Mexico, during the remote ages, in a canoe
built of serpent-skins. His object was to civilize the East and to do
away with human sacrifice. He communicated with the people by means of
cords in which knots were tied in the most ingenious manner. The knots
conveyed the meaning of the Prophet, and his peculiar messages were
carried from pueblo to pueblo by swift messengers, who took great
delight in executing their tasks.

A number of exceedingly romantic legends are centered around the Pueblo
de Taos, which is about twenty miles from Embudo. Taos is considered the
most interesting and the most perfect specimen of a Pueblo Indian
fortress. It consists of two communistic houses, each five stories high,
and a Roman Catholic church (now in a ruined condition) which stands
near, although apart from the dwellings. Around the f