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140 driven the nose of his ploughshare, demolishing a few of his teeth; and as he was pronounced worth carriage, he was henceforth, under the high-sounding name of Huitzilipoctli, accommodated with a seat in the coach, by the side of his purchaser.

We now turned our attention towards the conical mountain of Tezcozingo, an inferior spur of the great chain to the east; and skirting the town of Tezcuco, bore off in that direction. The country exhibited many plantations of maguey, and the villages were interspersed with hedges of tall organ cactus. Long before we got to the church of La Navidad, which at a distance seemed close under the steep and pointed hill upon which the object of our search, the Baño de Montezuma, was situated, it became apparent that night would overtake us in the midst of our excursion. But nothing daunted, we galloped forward over the great plain; and under the direction of an Indian guide, whose assistance was secured at the last village, and crossing a deep barranca, we began to ascend the mountain through the scattered plantations of nopal and maguey. Fragments of pottery, end broken pieces of obsidian knives and arrows; pieces of stucco, shattered terraces, and old walls, were thickly dispersed over its whole surface. We soon found farther advance on horseback impracticable; and attaching our patient steeds to the nopal bushes, we followed our Indian guide on foot; scrambling upward, over rock and through tangled brushwood. On gaining the narrow ridge which connects the conical hill with one at the rear, we found the remains of a wall and causeway; and a little higher, reached a recess, where, at the foot of a small precipice, overhung with Indian fig and grass, the rock had been wrought by hand into a flat surface of large dimensions. In this perpendicular wall of rock, a carved Toltec Calendar existed formerly; but the Indians finding the place visited occasionally by foreigners from the capital, took it into their heads that there must be a silver vein there; and straightway set to work to find it, obliterating the sculpture, and driving a level beyond it into the hard rock for several yards.