Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/242

208 stone slab seven inches thick, four feet nine inches in diameter, and pierced through the centre, lying upon the top of a circular wall whose top was level with the ground. On removing this stone he found a well filled up with broken stones and fragments of pottery. The upper portion of the slab bore evidence of having been originally sculptured, but the tracings of the chisel were so much worn by time and seasons that they could not be drawn with accuracy. On the top of the tumulus, in front of which this well was discovered, grew a wild fig tree, whose gigantic height of more than an hundred feet, indicates the great age of the work and the long period of its abandonment.

The walls of the adjacent minor mounds had all fallen inward, from which the traveller concluded that they had been used for sepulture; but he does not seem to have taken the time or trouble to verify this conjecture by personal explorations. The ground, for several miles around, was strewn with loose hewn stones of various shapes, and broken fragments of pottery, which had unquestionably formed parts of domestic utensils. Fragments of obsidian, which had no doubt been the knives and weapons of the former inhabitants of this spot, were also plentifully scattered about, and every indication existed of a dense population in the by gone days. These ruins are placed by Mr. Norman in 98° 31' west longitude and 22° 9' north latitude.

But the remains of edifices, pyramids and tombs were not the only relics found by the traveller in these dense forests bordering the Atlantic coast. The Indians who once dwelt in this district, like the Aztecs, Zapotecs and Yucatese had evidently devoted themselves to sculpture; but whether for the purpose of simple adornment or for idolatry, there are no facts to apprise us with certainty. The most remarkable relic found by Norman, was a large head, beautifully cut in fine sandstone, of a dark reddish hue, which abounds in the neighborhood. The face stands out in bold relief from the rough block, as if it had been left unfinished, or as if it was originally designed to occupy a place among the ornamental portions of an edifice. The industrious traveller caused this object to be borne, with others, to Tampico, and has deposited it in the collection of the New York Historical Society. Other stones, of a somewhat similar character, attracted his attention, but the most extraordinary sculpture he has described in his work is that to which he assigns the name of the American Sphynx. It is the image of a gigantic turtle, with the head of a man protruding boldly from beneath its carved and curving case. The back was correctly and