Adobe Homes

       I have frequently watched the making of adobes by the natives of New Mexico. Adobes are sun-dried bricks about twelve inches long, eight wide and two deep. They are used where the States' people would employ kiln-seasoned bricks and stone, and for many purposes for which lumber is used in a wooded section. Fences, for instance, are largely made of adobes; corrals, gardens, orchards, yards, churches, schools and convents are enclosed by walls built of adobes.
       These mud walls are often seen with cacti planted thickly on their tops, as a double security against thieving or other purposes. When cacti are not easily procurable, the walls are defended by broken glass bottles, imbedded in the top round of bricks before they are thoroughly dry.
       On lines where protection is not called for, I have seen the tops of these fences picturesquely ornamented with bright flowering plants, such as scarlet and yellow cacti, the wild sunflower, the Spanish bayonet and the Mexican lily.
       When a house is to be built, an addition to be made to one, an oven to be built or a fireplace, or a piece of ground to be enclosed, the enterprising Mexican assembles his helpers as at a primitive house-raising. The first move is to spade up a patch of ground, often a portion of his own front yard.  Sometimes, as an act of friendliness, the adobe-maker gets permission to spade up a neighbor's yard, or a vacant lot near the building site.
       The ground being well broken, water is brought on and the mixing is begun. As the surface, before the breaking, was in all probability but carelessly swept, many bits not essential to good bricks get mixed in the mud - bits of glass, stone, pottery, tin, wire, chips, rags, etc. But it is not in the purpose of the adobe-makers to use other materials than water and the soil everywhere found.  

       There is a little preliminary mixing with hoe and spade, but shortly the workers strip to the waist, bare the feet, roll above the knees whatever there may be of trousers legs, and walk bravely into the mud. Standing in the brown mixture of precisely his own color, the expressionless, statuesque Mexican might, by an easy reach of fancy, be regarded as an outgrowth of the adobe mud. Now hands and feet reinforce spade and hoe, until the mixing is complete.

Making Adobe for A House.

       Rough wooden molds are then filled by the hands with the mud, and scraped level by the hands. The molds are carried away a short distance and the molded mud is tipped out on the ground.
       There the adobes lie for days or weeks, sunning, while the owners are sunning themselves against adobe walls centuries old, it may be. There is no fear of the blocks being spoiled by rain, in this white and bright land where the sun shines three hundred and sixty-five days in the year.
       The mud-bricks being sufficiently baked on one side, they are turned over, and in time, on edge, until all sides and edges have had the effect of a sufficient period of direct sunshine.
       An Eastern brick maker would regard these adobe bricks as rough, uneven, unsightly. But they have their merits. Their making does not call for any skilled labor; they can be made in a day, dried without expense, and can be laid by inexperienced hands. They form such inexpensive building material that the poorest man can have his own house.
       I have seen many a comfortable adobe house of four rooms, plastered well inside and out, erected at a cost of five hundred dollars.
       I choose the adjective comfortable advisedly. Without the shelter of a tree, in a land of perennial sunshine, an adobe house furnishes a complete protection from summer heat, however high the mercury may be. The earth walls never get heated through in such a climate as New Mexico's; neither do they ever get chilled through.
       In the shelter of an adobe house, you can forget that there is winter cold or summer heat.
       The Mexican peasant builds an unpretentious lodge, but for comfort it will stand comparison with the peasant-house of any land. He lays the adobes on the bare earth, builds up two or three feet, then waits some days to insure the walls' dryness, builds a few more feet and again waits.
       When his wall has reached a height of ten or twelve feet he stops. Then he lays on the beams or rafters, usually of the unbarked trunks of the pinon-trees, not fully grown. The pinon is the mountain pine of the nut-bearing variety.
       The rafters are not of uniform length. Some project a foot over the wall, others more than a yard, furnishing a place for drying plants, or for the storing of hay, or for the roosting of Mexican boys ambitious enough to climb to the roof.
       These rafters are the support for the thick planks or boards laid closely across, which are to receive the dry adobe dirt. This is piled on, to the thickness of about thirty inches. This makes a dry, warm roof, on which, in the course of time, chance seeds take root, causing a little forest of plants to  spring up on the low roofs.
       The dirt roofs are safe as long as the timbers are sound, and the timbers, being measurably protected from damp and air, remain good for long periods.
       But ants sometimes find out the rafters of a house and honeycomb them, making no visible sign of their presence. The timber then suddenly gives way, letting down the mass of earth, imperiling life and injuring the house's belongings. The brother of a Santa banker once lost his life by the falling in of one of these dirt roofs. Many adobe houses, however, both old and new, have roofs of a better character.
       One might think that the adobe house would be a perishable structure. In a land of rains, of much freezing and thawing, it might be; but there are adobe houses in New Mexico and Arizona centuries old, and as good as when first built.
       Some adobe houses have walls eight feet thick. These were built not only for sure protection against heat and cold, but also as defenses against many enemies.
       The adobe house is the outcome of ages of experience in a climate of peculiar conditions. The Americans have introduced some architectural improvements, but they have taught the Mexicans little of real value in their climate.
       Even the wealthy Mexican of today, educated, it may be, in Washington or St. Louis, builds preferably an adobe house. If one is built on a stone foundation, with hooded windows, far-projecting roof, with balconies or portals, there is no more comfortable, weather-proof, picturesque dwelling. For a small expenditure, a house can be built in that delightful climate in which not an hour of discomfort from heat or cold need be spent in all the year. Sarah Winter Kellogg, 1897.