Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/490

482 as in the South, this primitive method of a people yet in the infancy of art and architecture is succeeded by grand buildings worthy the name of palaces, and adorned with sculptures that have elicited the admiration of the world.

The largest structure here is the "Pyramid of the Sun,"—Tonatiuh Itzacuatl, "House of the Sun,"—with a base of over seven hundred feet, and a height of two hundred; the next, the "Pyramid of the Moon," having one side of its base 426 feet in length, another one 511, and a height of 137 feet. These are the principal pyramids, but there are also many smaller mounds and pyramidal elevations, which nearly surround the larger ones, and line a broad roadway, called the "Street of the Dead." The two pyramids are 2,700 feet apart; both are built in terraces, and to-day have broad level platforms at their summits, with pathways much obstructed by débris winding up their sides. Both are composed of rock, stones, cement, and pottery, and their, outlines are hardly any more sharply defined, at the present day, than an ordinary steep-sided hill. The vegetation of aloes and creeping vines which covers their sides contributes to hide the pyramidal outline, and the facing of dressed stone, with which