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Some were as narrow as four feet six inches, others six feet, showing that one room had been divided into two. The basement rooms were probably occupied for storage exclusively, whence their division. They were dark, except as light entered through the trap-doorway from above. The structure connecting the wings and bounding the court was evidently a single or double row of apartments.
The man in the trap-doorway paused with his shoulders above the floor, looked around, listened, then drew himself up, walked across the floor, and shot the heavy bolt on the door that led into the hallway of the house. He returned then to the trapdoor, bent over it, and whistled softly. Two more men, in answer to the summons, came up into the room.
These estufas, which are used as places of council, and for the performance of their religious rites, are still found at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There are six at Taos, three at each house, and they are partly sunk in the ground by an excavation. They are entered through a trap-doorway in the roof, the descent being by a ladder.
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