Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/447

Rh looking on the grand landscape which surrounds it, a new theory suggested itself to me. The pyramids in the Valley of the Nile stand out bold and grand, the great central figures in the scene,—undwarfed by comparison with any great mountains in the vicinity. We can understand how men could seek to erect in such a locality, an enduring monument to their power and greatness. But here, in full view of Orizaba and Popocatapetl, the mightiest work of man is but a mole-hill hardly worthy of a moments notice, and even the egotism of the most barbaric nature must stand rebuked in the presence of these perfect works of the Almighty hand. I do not believe that there was ever a race on earth so vain as to erect such a monument in such a locality; and furthermore, there was no necessity for such an expenditure of time and labor as the erection of such a pile of adobe, in the Plain of Cholula, as this pyramid, if wholly artificial, would have called for. Scattered through all the valleys of Central Mexico, are detached hills, composed of washed gravel and earth, equal or superior in size to this pyramid. You can see a number of them from the point where we stood.

It seems to me quite probable that one of these hills stood here where the Cholulans built their city; and that in order to fit it for use as a temple, they merely cut away the sides, and terraced it into its pyramidal form. The angles and faces of the terraces thus formed, must be protected from the effects of the storms, which would soon wash down the entire mound, and so they faced it over with adobes, laid up with care and intermixed with lava, which soon became a solid, concrete mass, as we see it to day. The adobes and layers of lava are perfect at many points, but in other places,