Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 2.djvu/285

Rh I do not know any thing in nature more hideous than an old Indian woman, with all the deformities of her person displayed, as they usually are, by a dress which hardly covers a tenth part of her body; and in La Puebla, in consequence of the numerous convents in which alms were distributed, these objects were particularly numerous. We were too happy to escape by a different door from that by which we had entered, and to take refuge in the carriage.

We left La Puebla on the 22d of March, and slept at Săn Mărtīn, taking the road through Chŏlūlă to that place, in order to obtain a better view of the old Mexican Tĕŏcālli, or Pyramid, of which Humboldt's work contains so detailed a description. The base of this Pyramid comprises a square of about 1773 feet; the height is 54 metres, or 177 feet. It is truncated, and, on the spacious platform in which it terminates, the Conquerors have erected a Chapel, as if to mark the substitution of another creed, and another race, for the nation by whose united exertions this stupendous monument must have been raised. The whole mass is formed of alternate layers of unburnt bricks and clay, and is now overgrown with thick shrubs, amongst which clouds of Tortolas, (a small wood pigeon,) are found. Its structure is said by Baron Humboldt to present a curious analogy with that of the Temple of Belus at Babylon, and of the Pyramids of Egypt.

Its object was undoubtedly religious, but as its construction is ascribed to the Toltecs, a nation