Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/418

410 at once, and he mounted his jackass, hung a calabash of water to his saddle, and led the way to the sugar hacienda of Xochitl, whence we took a path among the hills of Xochicalco. All the fields were thickly covered with volcanic débris, and the open shaft of many a mine showed that silver had been found here in small quantity. The heat was intense, and I was in agony from it for nearly two hours, until we reached the great hill, and slowly climbed the terraced slopes.

As this hill commands the whole valley, save for another cerro to the east, a glorious prospect is spread around, but chiefly of barren hill and plain, with two lovely lakes lying to the south, and barrancas everywhere dividing the surface. This cerro is directly north from the valley of Mexico, and the lights of the people who occupied it must have guided the ancient Aztecs as they came from their capital, going south, for it is in full view from the mountains. "The stones of the crowning structure are laid upon each other without cement, and kept in place by their weight alone; and as the sculpture of a figure is seen to run over several of them, there can be no doubt that the bassi rilievi were cut after the pyramid was erected." Stones seven feet in length by nearly three in breadth are seen here, and all the great blocks of porphyry which composed the building, and perhaps encased the entire cerro, were brought from a distance, and borne up a hill three hundred feet in height.

As a ruin little visited, and standing apart from every other group in Mexico, not only isolated by position, but unique in its structure and carvings, this Castillo of Xochicalco deserves minute description. It was mentioned by Humboldt, perhaps visited by him, as he came up to the Mexican valley from Acapulco, and must have passed within a few leagues of it on the road; but the last writer who refers to it wrote over thirty years ago. He says:—

"Who the builders of this pyramid were, no one can tell. There is no tradition of them, or of their temple. When first discovered, no one knew to what it had been devoted, or who had built it. It had outlasted both history and memory. . . . . No one who examines the figures with which it is covered can