Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/549

Rh There was one more ruin, a pyramidal mound about seventy-five feet in height, faced with stone, with a series of stone steps fronting westward, and containing to-day, like the pyramid of Cholula, a chapel on its summit. "I am inclined to believe," says Bancroft, "that Mitla was built by the Zapotecs at a very early period of their civilization, at a time when the builders were strongly influenced by the Maya priesthood, if they were not themselves a branch of the Maya people." Scattered over the ground, as about the pyramids of San Juan, near Mexico, are idols of clay and rude implements of stone. The children brought us many, some excellently carved, flat heads of terracotta, that probably once served as ornaments for the walls against which they were stuck. Mention is made of stone wedges, and axes and chisels of copper, having been found in the ancient quarries, yet visible, not far distant from the ruins. That the hills about are full of ruins which no one has seen of late, we were fully convinced. We visited several sepulchral structures of stone, their inner surfaces carved into the same strange shapes as adorned the walls.

Professor Bandelier, sent out by the Archaeological Institute of America, had remained here twelve days, but had not seen these paredones, or Indian walls, in the hills which we visited. The first one we saw at the hacienda of Sagá, and Mr. Bliss and myself visited it while Mr. Aymé carried on his measurements and excavations at Mitla, from which it is one league distant. It is called the "subterranean palace," is beneath the house of the proprieter of the hacienda, and was discovered some twelve years ago. The first intimation that this modern house had been built above a tomb of the departed Indians was from a phosphoric light, that a servant saw dancing over an aperture in the floor of the main hall. An excavation revealed a vast vault in the shape of a cross, each arm of which was about thirty feet in length. Three skeletons were found stretched out in it, which crumbled to dust on exposure to the air. The sides of the great blocks, about five feet in height, were ornamented after the fashion of Mitla, but instead of mosaics the figures were cut from the solid stone. This was of a fresh red