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the Sybarites of Mexico, though there is no notice, by the way, of their ever having displayed the original hardiness of that people, who became afterwards a by-word for effeminacy in Italy.

Nor was this all, as their great earth-pyramid evidences. Cholula was even more famous as a religious city than as a commercial one. Here the god called Quetzalcoatl is said to have paused on his passage to the coast, teaching the people; here they worshipped him; and hither came pilgrims from all parts, rich as well as poor, to swell the processions that attended a wealthy and numerous priesthood. Cholula, indeed, has been styled the Mecca of the Aztecs; the Holy City of Anahuac; and one leading article of faith pertaining to this god's worship deserves remembering, as akin to that of some others, including our own, viz., he was one day to return and resume full dominion over the land.

We visited, and of course mounted, the great pyramid of Cholula, from the top of which there at once burst upon the view a prospect which might well indeed serve to relieve the mind from reflecting on those religious horrors, the human sacrifices, which connect it with the worship of Quetzalcoatl, and with the later and perhaps better authenticated historical horrors which connect it with Cortés, and the planting of the Cross. To the left, as we faced the north, rose the two great snow mountains near Mexico, seen in flank; close on the north-east was Malintzi, with

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all his crags and forests, and farther off in the east rose the mighty Peak of Orizaba. Lesser mountains. encircled us at a greater distance, and spreading leagues of laughing fertility carpeted the comparatively boundless plains.

The earth-pyramid, as it at present stands, is, as a pyramid, “informe, ingens," although no other name can even now be given it than pyramid; and the only just representation that I have seen of its present shapeless shape appears in "Our Sister Republic," by ·Col. Evans of San Francisco. It is truncated, and in that form its perpendicular height is given as only of one hundred and seventy-seven feet. At the top, the platform is said to comprise more than an acre, and is occupied by a devotional Christian church; hideous outside, but handsomely adorned, after church fashion, within. It may fairly be said that you may wander and scramble about the broken outline of this pyramid, among the trees and brambles, and even the cultivated patches that its unequal sides present. Over these sides, moreover, it is claimed that there can be plainly discovered the traces of those ascending terraces which characterized the Teocallis, or temples of the Aztecs, round which the priests, here as elsewhere, used to wind with their processions, to celebrate their hideous human sacrifices in the temple which stood on the flat summit. Hence, the present church of the new religion, now here standing, must be taken as historically superseding the broken altars of the old.

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I will not say that there are not traces of old ascending terraces, but it must require a very experienced eye in these matters to enable a writer to descant positively upon the fact. No doubt, the present approaches to the church would naturally • have followed, to a certain extent, the old lines. Additional evidence of the pyramid itself having been devoted to some special solemn purposes has been also afforded by the laying open, as in the case of the two earth pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan, of subterranean walls and passages of brick and stone. The four sides at the base are stated to face, or (speaking more safely) to have faced, the four cardinal points of the compass, and the length of one of them is given as of one thousand four hundred and twentythree feet; about twice as long, that is, as that of the great pyramid of Cheops; but how this is measured I cannot say. Round the base of Cheops I have walked; there can be no difficulty about outline there; and taking the medium between the measurements of Sir G. Wilkinson and Col. H. Vyse, these sides may be stated at seven hundred and sixty feet each; but I could not pretend to find the way of walking round Cholula. Nevertheless, the length of the sides being assumed, the area must follow; and whereas that of Cheops is given by Col. Vyse at very nearly thirteen acres, that of Cholula is stated at no less than forty-four acres. Such is this great earth-pyramid of Cholula; and if some of our learned and ingenious

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