If the house is
well built it is comfortable enough in pleasant weather, but as
often as it rains the dirt roof springs a leak and splashes water
and mud over everything. If by chance the house stands on low
ground and is surrounded by water, as sometimes happens, after a
heavy rain the walls become soaked and dissolved into mud when
the house collapses. The adobe house may have been suited to the
wants of a primitive people, but in the present age of
improvement, it is scarcely worth saving except it be as a relic
of a vanishing race.
In order to escape in a measure the discomforts of the midday
heat the natives either seek the shade in the open air where the
breeze blows, or, what is more common, close up tight the adobe
house in the morning and remain indoors until the intense heat
from the scorching sun penetrates the thick walls, which causes
the inmates to move out. In the cool of the evening they visit
and transact business and when the hour comes for retiring go to
bed on cots made up out of doors where they sleep until morning,
while the house is left open to cool off during the night. This
process is repeated every day during the hot summer months and is
endured without complaint.
The natives, also, take advantage of the dry air to operate a
novel method of refrigeration. The cloth covered army canteen
soaked in water and the handy water jug of the eastern harvest
field wrapped in a wet blanket are familiar examples of an
ineffectual attempt at refrigeration by evaporation.
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