reality his strength is very great, especially in the legs and thighs,
and in the muscles that are brought into action in carrying burdens.
Sartorius used to observe the Indian miners bringing loads of above
five-hundred-weight up a hundred fathoms of mine-ladders, which consist
of trunks of trees fixed slanting across the shaft, with notches cut in
them for steps.

As I have said before, it is not the mere training of the individual
that has produced this remarkable development of the power of carrying
loads. The centuries before the Conquest, when there were no beasts of
burden, had gradually produced a race whose bodies were admirably
fitted for such work; and the persistency with which they have clung to
their old habits has done much to prevent their losing this
peculiarity.

To complete the description of the Indians which I have been led into
by speaking of the sugar-boilers,--they are chocolate-brown in colour,
with curved noses, straight black hair hanging flat round their heads
and covering their wonderfully low foreheads, and occasionally a scanty
black beard. Their faces are broadly oval, their eyes far apart, and
they have wide mouths with coarse lips. Not bad faces on the whole, but
heavy and unexpressive.

At ten o'clock came a heavy supper, the substantial meal of the day,
and immediately afterwards we went to bed, and dreamt such dreams as
may be imagined. We were off early in the morning with a wizened old
mestizo to guide us to the ruins of Xochicalco, which are on this very
estate of Temisco. The estate is forty miles across, however, and it is
a long ride to the ruins. After we leave the fields of sugar-cane, we
see scarcely a hut, nor a patch of cultivated ground. At last we get to
Xochicalco, and find ourselves at the foot of a hill, some four hundred
feet in height, extraordinarily regular in its conical shape, more so
than any natural hill could be, unless it were the cone of a volcano.
At different heights upon this hill, we could see from below broad
terraces running round and round it. A little nearer we came upon a
great ditch. The sides had fallen in, in many places; sometimes it was
quite filled up, and everywhere it was overgrown with thick brushwood,
as was the hill itself. It seems that this ditch runs quite round the
base of the hill, and is three miles long. Climbing up through the
thicket of thorny bushes and out upon the terraces, it became quite
evident that the hill had been ar