Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/345

Rh relics are thrown up. Probably no city in the world now inhabited, has so many relics of ancient days buried beneath it. The accumulation of centuries has gradually raised the surface of the whole city, and buildings erected a hundred or two hundred years since have lost the whole, or a portion of their lower stories, in many instances. At the residence of Mr. Hammekin, Calle Independencia, No. 1, which comprises a portion of the old Convent of San Francisco, I was shown a well twelve feet in depth, the bottom of which is what was formerly the surface of the ground in the patio, and the marks of old stair-cases, etc., etc., on the walls of the lower story, show that the filling in to bring it to the present level of the streets, could not be less than six to twelve feet.

Señor Altamirano, the best Aztec scholar living, claims that the proof is conclusive that the Aztecs did not come here from Asia, as has been almost universally believed, but were a race originated in America and as old as the Chinese themselves, and that China may even have been peopled from America. He points out on their old maps and charts, various things which Humboldt misunderstood and by which he was led into error, and demonstrates that the Aztecs, indeed, occupied Arizona in the fifteenth century as Humboldt supposed, but only as a colony sent out from the Valley of Mexico—not as a people making a temporary halt on a long march in search of a new home. If he is correct—and I think he is—extensive excavations in the "made land" of Mexico, would result in interesting revelations.

I had often heard the great National Monte de Piedad of Mexico, spoken of in terms of unqualified