One can well imagine that the people of Acoma do not spend many of their waking hours in their apartments.  In this warm climate, with its superb air and almost rainless sky, every one lives as much as possible out of doors, and a true child of the sun always prefers the canopy of heaven to any other covering, and would rather eat on his doorstep and sleep on his flat roof, than to dine at a sumptuous table or recline on a comfortable bed.  Nature seems to be peculiarly kind and indulgent to the people of warm climates.  They need not only less clothing but less food, and it is only when we travel in the tropics that we realize on how little sustenance man can exist.  A few dates, a cup of coffee, and a bit of bread appear to satisfy the appetites of most Aridians, whether they are Indians or Arabs.  In the North, food, clothing, and fire are necessities of life; but to the people of the South the sun suffices for a furnace, fruits give sufficient nourishment, and clothing is a chance acquaintance.  Yet life is full of compensation.  Where Nature is too indulgent, her favorites grow shiftless; and the greatest amount of indoor luxury and comfort is always found where Nature seems so hostile that man is forced to fight with her for life.

[Illustration:  CHARACTERISTIC PUEBLO HOUSES.]

[Illustration:  IN THE PUEBLO.]

Most of the cells which we examined in the many-chambered honeycomb of Acoma had very little furniture except a primitive table and a few stools, made out of blocks of wood or trunks of trees.  Across one corner of each room was, usually, stretched a cord on which the articles of the family wardrobe had been thrown promiscuously.  The ornaments visible were usually bows and arrows, rifles, Navajo blankets, and leather pouches, hung on wooden pegs.  Of beds I could find none; for Indians sleep by preference on blankets, skins, or coarse-wool mattresses spread every night upon the floor.  When we consider that the forty millions of Japan, even in their comparatively high degree of civilization, still sleep in much the same way, we realize how unnecessary bedsteads are to the majority of the human race.  In a few rooms I discovered wooden statuettes of saints, one or two crucifixes, and some cheap prints, which were evidently regarded with great veneration.  The floors, which were not of wood, but of smooth adobe nearly as hard as asphalt, were in every instance remarkably clean.

[Illustration:  INTERIOR OF A PUEBLO APARTMENT.]

It is an interesting fact, in the domestic economy of the Indian life led in these aerial villages, that the woman is always the complete owner of her apartment and its contents; for it is the women of the tribe who build the dwellings.  Accordingly, the position of a Pueblo woman is extraordinary; and should her husband ill-treat her, she has the right and power to evict him, and to send him back to his original home.  On the other hand, the man is sole possessor