Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/48

42 The official residence of the chiefs of Tezcuco had three hundred rooms; some of the terraces on which it stood are still entire and covered with hard cement. Its richly-sculptured stones form an inexhaustible quarry for the house-builders of this age. The neighboring hill, where once was a summer retreat for these luxurious rulers, still shows the stone stairways and terraces which adorned the place. The city was quite embowered in trees and beautified with many parks and gardens. In fact, the botanical garden found at the time of the Spanish conquest was a model afterward copied in various parts of Europe.

Our faith in the glowing descriptions given by Spanish authors of Mexican art and civilization before the conquest would not survive their many exaggerated and contradictory stories if we could not turn to the testimony left by the old inhabitants themselves. While the monuments reared by the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico have been swept away, the temples and the dwellings farther south exist in vast and splendid desolation, proving that from their very beginning these later tribes were familiar with a style of architecture whose "lavish magnificence has never been excelled."

A late traveler speaks of the ruins of Kabah as "ornamented from the very foundation." The cornices running over the doorways would embellish the art of any known era, and "amid a mass of barbarism of rude and uncouth conceptions it stands an offering by American builders worthy the acceptance of a polished people." The remains of Mitla—one of the holy cities of Southern Mexico—are considered the finest in a country which can furnish ruined cities by the score. These remains are situated in a desert place unsheltered by the dense