Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/229

 In half an hour we were again in motion, after a fruitless effort to shoot a young buck we had started in a neighboring corn-field. The sun was now intensely hot, and from its influence and the exercise of the morning, I was drenched with perspiration, nor was it disagreeable to find the pores of the skin thus relieved, after a residence of eight months in the Valley of Mexico, where the sensation is scarcely known.

I put up my umbrella to screen myself as much as possible from the direct rays, but the heat was reflected as scorchingly from the naked plain and shrubless hills. Nevertheless, wearied by the fatigue of six hours in the saddle without food, I soon fell into a doze, which lasted until we entered the bare gorge between the hills through which commences the ascent to the ruined pyramid.

Here, among some scanty bushes which afforded shade and shelter, we dismounted to breakfast; but, unluckily, water had been entirely forgotten by our servants ; there was not a drop in the gourds or canteens. Our pic-nic feast of sardines, ham, sausage, and corned. beef, consequently but added to a parching thirst which there was no hope of allaying but by slow draughts of claret and sherry that had been exposed for hours to a blazing sun on the backs of mules. Nor was this all. Scarcely had we seated ourselves, when clouds of black-flies and mosquitos came down from their nests among the ruins, and I write this memorial of them with hands inflamed by their inexorable stings.

In a bad humor, as you may naturally suppose, for antiquarian researches, I nevertheless mounted my horse as soon as breakfast was over, and ascended the hill with Pedro, while my companions, who had less anxiety about such matters, laid down under an awning of serapes stretched from tree to tree, to finish the nap that had been interrupted at half-past three in the morning.

At the distance of six leagues from the city of Cuernavaca lies a cerro, three hundred feet in height, which, with the ruins that crown it, is known by the name of, or "the Hill of Flowers." The base of this eminence is surrounded by the very distinct remains of a deep and wide ditch; its summit is attained by five spiral terraces; the walls that support them are built of stone, joined by cement, and are still quite perfect; and, at regular distances, as if to buttress these terraces, there are remains of bulwarks shaped like the bastions of a fortification. The summit of the hill is a wide esplanade, on the eastern side of which are still perceptible three truncated cones, resembling the tumuli found among many similar ruins in Mexico. On the other sides there are also large