Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/300

Rh of pottery, Indian arrows, and broken sacrificial knives; while, occasionally, we passed over the ruins of an aqueduct winding round the hill. The eminence seems to have been converted, from its base to its summit, (a distance of perhaps five hundred feet,) into a pile of those terraced gardens, so much admired by every tourist who falls into raptures among the romantic groves of Isola Bella.

Our horses seemed to be better accustomed to the dangerous clambering among these steeps, than ourselves, and we therefore continued in our saddles until we reached a point about fifty feet below the summit, where, in a due northerly direction, the rock had been cut into seats along a recess leading to a perpendicular wall, which is said to have been covered, until recently, with a Toltec Calendar. When the Indians found that a place, otherwise so unattractive, was visited by foreigners, they immediately imagined their ancestors had concealed treasures behind the stone; as they supposed that gold, and not mere curiosity could have lured strangers from a distance to so unsightly a spot. They consequently destroyed the carved rock in order to penetrate the hill, and there is now not a fragment of the ancient sculpture remaining. In the hole, burrowed by the treasure-finders, we discovered a number of Indians, of both sexes, sheltering themselves from the rain; and as they had a supply of nopals, (with which the surrounding rocks are covered,) we were not loth to dismount, and, forgetting our indignation for the moment—crawled into their cavern to enjoy the luscious fruit.

A few steps upward led us to the summit of Tezcosingo. I found there no remains of a temple or edifice; but as the hill is supposed to have been formerly dedicated to the bloody rites of Indian worship, modern piety has thought proper to purify the spot by the erection of a cross. And never was one built on a more majestic and commanding site. From its foot, the entire valley, lake, Tezcoco, Mexico, and lakes far to the north, were distinctly visible, and the beauty of the panorama was greatly increased by the sudden clearing of the skies, and an outburst of the setting sun.

Bidding our Indians farewell in their burrow, we descended over massive fragments of architecture, to a spot where a path terminates abruptly in a bastion-like wall, plunging, precipitously down the side of the mountain for two hundred feet. Here we found what is called the "."