A brick not kiln-dried.—Spanish.
1834. The houses in Costa Rica are the best in the country for resisting these shocks, being, like the others, long and low, and built of adobes or undried [? sun-dried] bricks, two feet long and one broad, made of clay mixed with straw to give adhesion, and laid when soft, with upright posts between, so that they are dried by the sun into one mass, which moves with the surface of the earth.—J. L. Stephens, ‘Central America,’ p. 224 (1854). (N.E.D.)
1845. Fort Laramie … is built of adobes. The walls are about two feet thick, and twelve or fourteen feet high, the tops being picketed or spiked.—Joel Palmer, Journal, p. 27 (Cincinn., 1847).
1846. The house of Mr. Johnson is a small building of two rooms, one-half constructed of logs, the other of adobes or sun-dried bricks.—Edwin Bryant, ‘What I saw in California,’ p. 241 (N.Y.).
1852. I know enough about rock. If a man should undertake to put me up a stone house, I should wish him to build it of adobies instead, and then I should have a good house.—Brigham Young, Oct. 9: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 220.
[He was contending that the Temple at Salt Lake City should be built of adobie, on account of its supposed durability; but he gave way, and it was built of hewn stone.]
1853. The houses built were some of hewn logs, and some of adobies (dried bricks), all neat and comfortable.—Millennial Star, xv. 458.
1853. Supposing that Adam was formed actually out of clay,… he would have been an adobie to this day. He would not have known anything.—Brigham Young, Oct. 23: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ ii. 6.
1855. In New Mexico and Salt Lake City, “adobes,” made of well-tempered clay, eight inches square and sixteen inches in length, dried in the sun, are used for building purposes.—Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kansas, Jan. 27.
1856. A small Plaza forms the centre of the town [San Diego], one side of which is occupied by a little adobe building used as a court room.—G. H. Derby (‘John Phœnix’), ‘Phœnixiana,’ p. 204 (N.Y.). (Italics in the original.)
1867. The quarters are ‘adobe,’ nothing more or less than sun-dried brick, made and dried after the exact method followed by the children of Israel, over which they labored and of which they afterward complained.—Letter of Gen. Custer, April 12: Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 555 (1888).
1888. One of my friends was stationed at a post where the quarters were old and of adobe, and had been used during the war for stables.—Mrs. Custer, id., p. 175.
