Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/314

Rh paved with rough stones, still visible in many places above the grass, and were perfectly straight.

"From the flatness of the fine plain over which they extended, I cannot conceive them to have been constructed as paths, since the people, who walked barefoot and used no animals of burthen, must naturally have preferred the smooth, earthy footways, which presented themselves on every side, to these roughly paved ones. If this be allowed, it is not difficult to suppose that they were the centre of streets of huts, which, being in those times constructed of the same kind of frail materials as those of the present day, must long since have disappeared. Many places on the plain are thickly strewed with stones, which may once have formed building materials for the town; and there are extensive modern walls round the cattle farms, which, not improbably, were constructed from the nearest streets. At all events, whatever end these causeways may have answered, the citadel itself still remains, and from its size and strength confirms the accounts given by Cortéz, Bernal Diaz, and others of the conquerors, of the magnitude and extent of the Mexican edifices, but which have been doubted by Robertson, De Pau, and others. We observed also, in some sheltered places, the remains of good plaster, confirming the accounts above alluded to; and there can be little doubt that the present rough, yet magnificent buildings, were once encased in wood and whitened, as ancient Mexico, the towns of Yucatan, Tobasco, and many other places are described to have been.

"The Cerro de los Edificios, and the mountains of the surrounding range, are all of gray porphyry, easily fractured into slabs, and this, with comparatively little labor, has furnished building-materials for the edifices which crown its summit. We saw no remnants of obsidian among the ruins or on the plain—which is remarkable, as being the general substance of which the knives and arrow-heads of the Mexicans were formed; but a few pieces of a very compact porphyry were lying about, and some appeared to have been chipped to a rude form resembling arrow-heads.

"Not a trace of the ancient name of this interesting place, or that of the nation which inhabited it, is now to be found among the people in the neighborhood, who merely distinguished the isolated rock and buildings by one common name, 'Los Edificios.' I had inquired of the best instructed people about these ruins; but all my researches were unavailing, until I fortunately met with a note in the Abbé Clavigero's History of Mexico, which throws some light on the subject. 'The situation of Chicomoztoc, where the Mexicans sojourned nine years, is not known; but it appears to be that place, twenty miles distant from Zacatecas, toward the south, where there are still some remains of an immense edifice, which,