Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/199

Rh supplied the article to Montezuma and the Aztec nobles. Ruins of the structures erected by these Totonacs lie thick throughout the vast forests, in a line between Jalapa and the coast, going northward. Some of them have names, such as Misantla, Mapilca, and Papantla. The first named lies within thirty miles of Jalapa; but little is known of any of these groups, though the pyramid of Papantla was described eighty years ago. The base of this pyramid is an exact square, each side twenty-five metres in length, and its perpendicular height about twenty metres. It is composed of six successive stages, like the true teocallis of Mexico, and a great staircase of fifty-seven steps leads to the truncated summit. Hieroglyphics and strange figures, such as serpents and alligators, are carved in relief on the faced stones of each story, while a multitude of square niches, 366 in number, have given rise to the conjecture that they, in some occult sense, had connection with the ancient Toltec calendar; twelve additional niches in the stair toward the east may have stood for the "useless" or intercalated days at the end of their cycle.

To revert again to the charms of Jalapa; it is not my own unsupported testimony that I would offer. All travellers who have recorded their impressions of this city concur in praising its scenery and its doncellas. Says the Mexican adage, "Las Jalapeñas son muy halagüeñas"—"The women of Jalapa are very bewitching." And Mr. Ward (1827): "It is impossible that any words should convey an adequate idea of the country about Jalapa. It stands in the centre of some of the finest mountain scenery which any country can boast of." Humboldt was in love with it, and perhaps with the doncellas as well, for he had a very susceptible nature, this grand old man,—not old when he visited Mexico, but young and handsome.

The only drawback to perpetual enjoyment here is the drizzling rain, which the clouds from the Gulf, their burdens of moisture condensed by the cool mountain-tops, precipitate upon Jalapa. This drizzle is called the chipi-chipi. "Then," says the traveller Ruxton, "the sun is for days obscured, and the Jalapeño, muffled in his sarape, smokes his cigarro, and mutters.