Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/68

58 That there was, antecedent to the Aztecs, in this country of Mexico and Central America, a superior race to which the name of Toltecs or Mayas has been applied, who built the elaborate stone structures of Yucatan and of other portions of Central America, and who, it would seem, must have been acquainted with the use of metals, can not be doubted. At a town called Tula, about fifty miles from Mexico, on the line of the Mexican Central, where the Toltecs are reported to have first settled, the traveler will see on the plaza the lower half—i. e., from the feet to the waist—of two colossal and rude sitting figures; also, several perfect cylindrical sections of columns, which were very curiously arranged to fit into and support each other by means of a tenon and mortise, all of stone. The material of which these objects of un-questionably great antiquity are composed, and which all archæologists who have seen them agree are not Mexican or Aztec in their origin, is a very peculiar basalt, so hard that a steel tool hardly makes an impression upon it. When the same traveler arrives in the city of Mexico, and is shown the three greatest archaeological treasures of American origin—namely, the great idol, "Huitzilopochtli," the "Sacrificial Stone," and the so-called "Calendar" stone, now built into one of the outer walls of the cathedral—he might remark that the