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174 The ruins most nearly resembling those at Teotihuacan are found at Monte Alban in Zapotec territory, on a lofty ridge overlooking the city of Oaxaca. Holmes describes the appearance of the site as it struck him when he had climbed the long ascent from the latter city as follows: "The surface was not covered with scattered and obscure piles of ruins as I had expected, but the whole mountain had been remodelled by the hand of man until not a trace of natural contour remained. There was a vast system of level courts enclosed by successive terraces, and bordered by pyramids upon pyramids. Even the sides of the mountain descended in a succession of terraces, and the whole crest, separated by the hazy atmosphere from the dimly seen valleys more than a thousand feet below, and isolated completely from the blue range beyond, seemed suspended in mid-air." The quadrangular assemblage of foundation-mounds round courts is even more noticeable here than at Teotihuacan, though the limitations of the available building space rendered the arrangement less free on the whole. Most of the mounds seem to have been faced with quartzite blocks, barely dressed at all owing to the hard nature of the stone, and carved ornament is not very common. Few traces of buildings have been discovered, but excavation is by no means complete; however,the foundations of at least one structure with a complex arrangement of chambers have been laid bare, and it is earnestly to be hoped that some properly qualified archæologist may be entrusted with the task of thorough investigation. Monte Alban is further remarkable for the presence of sculptured grave-slabs and pillars bearing designs and inscriptions in a peculiar style (similar to Fig. 15; p. 106). Many Mexican day-signs can be recognized, but some of the glyphs are enclosed in "cartouches" of Maya style (to anticipate), and are accompanied by numerals in which five is expressed by a bar, another Maya characteristic.