The station buildings were long

The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sun dried , mud colored bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks, and Americans shorten to ‘dobies). The roofs, which had not slant to them worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a man’s front yard on top of his house. The buildings consisted of barns, stable room for twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating-room for passengers. This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a hostler or two. You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and you had to bending order to get in at the door. In place of a window there was a square hole about large enough for a man to crawl through , but the ground was packed hard. There was no stove, but the fire place served all the needful purposes. There were no shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an open sack of flour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black and venerable tin coffee pots , a tin tea-pot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon.
From the book “Roughing it” written by “Mark Twain.”