Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/235

 Rh States and Europe, and picked up several languages. He called upon us afterward at our hotel, to politely inquire our impressions of his tram-way.

The principal features of the trip were exquisite views of Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl across yellow grain-fields; a dilapidated convent turned to an iron foundery; an old aqueduct crossing the plain; a Spanish bridge, sculptured with armorial bearings, across the river Atoyac; and a fine grist-mill; and farther on a cotton-mill, turned by the water-power of the same river.

There has been a controversy as to whether the great mound was natural or artificial in origin. I do not see how there can be doubt about it now, for where numerous deep cuts have been made in it, for roads or cultivation, the artificial structure of adobe bricks is plainly visible. Such a place as it is to lie upon at ease and dream and go back to the traditions of the past! You may cast yourself down under large trees growing on the now ragged slopes, or by the pilgrimage chapel on the crest, where the God of the Air once reared his grotesque bulk. There is a sculptured cross, dated 1666, at the edge of the terrace, and rose-bushes grow out of the pavement. I know of no prospect of fertile hill and dale, scattered with quaint villages, in any country that surpasses it. An American was there that day with the purpose of buying a hacienda, if he could find one suitable, and I for one thought there were many plans much less sensible. Cholula had four hundred towers in its pagan times, and it may have had round about it almost as many spires when the Christian domination succeeded. Let me recite the names of a few of the villages seen from the top of the great pyramid, all with their churches, by twos and threes, or more: San Juan; San Andres; Santiago; Chicotengo; La Santissima; La Soledad; San Rafael;