culpture, pottery--Currency
and commerce--Social system--Advent of the white man.

The most remarkable of the remaining monuments in stone of the peoples
who successively or contemporaneously inhabited Mexico, are those
well-defined and fairly well-known groups of ruins scattered at wide
distances apart in the southern and south-eastern part of Mexican
territory. The principal of these are: Teotihuacan, at Texcoco, in the
Valley of Mexico; Cholula, in the State of Puebla; Monte Alban and
Mitla, in the State of Oaxaca; Palenque, in the State of Chiapas; Uxmal
and Chichen-Ytza, in the peninsula of Yucatan.

Of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, or Mexico, but little of antiquity
remains, as, according to the historian of the Conquest, the place was
almost entirely razed to the ground by Cortes. It is probable, however,
that enduring stone edifices formed a much less considerable part of
this city than has been supposed. Nevertheless, modern excavations
continually lay bare portions of Aztec masonry, as well as sculptured
monoliths. A short time ago a sculptured tiger, weighing eight tons,
was unearthed and deposited in the museum in the capital. The principal
building of the Aztec city was the great Teocalli, upon whose site the
existing cathedral was built. This huge truncated pyramid has been
described already. It was surrounded by a great wall, upon the cornice
of which huge carved stone serpents and tigers were the emblematic
ornaments. From this wall four gates opened on to the four main
streets, which radiated away towards the cardinal points of the
compass. Its dimensions are given as 365 feet long by 300 feet wide at
the base, whilst the summit-platform was raised more than 150 feet
above the level of the streets and square. Here was set the great image
of the Aztec war-god, the idol of the abominable Huitzilopochtli which
Cortes and his men, after their frightful hand-to-hand struggle with
the Aztecs on this giddy platform, tumbled down the face of the pyramid
into the streets below, among the astonished Indians. The grandeur,
architecturally, of the ancient City of Mexico has probably been
somewhat exaggerated by the _Conquistadores_ and subsequent
chroniclers, whose enthusiasm sometimes ran riot.

The ruins of Teotihuacan are situated in the north-eastern part of the
valley of Mexico, some miles from the shores of Lake Texcoco and
twenty-five miles from the modern City of Mexico. They are generally
ascribed t