rushing torrent. The
country hereabouts is under excellent cultivation, though the awkward
plough introduced by the Spaniards centuries ago still does service
here. Almost as soon as the city disappears from view, there looms in
the distance the grand pyramid of Cholula, crowned by a lofty modern
chapel, its dome of enameled and parti-colored tiles glistening in the
warm sunshine. Far beyond the pyramid the volcanoes are seen in their
lonely grandeur. Cholula lies upon a perfectly level plain, broken only
by the great artificial mound called the pyramid, situated on the
eastern outskirt of the present city. The town, Spanish history tells
us, once contained over two hundred thousand inhabitants; but to-day
there are less than nine thousand, while of its four hundred reputed
temples, scarcely a trace now remains.

When Cortez made his advent here he found Cholula to be the sacred city
of the Aztecs, where their main body of high priests and their most
venerated temples were located. Is it possible that these mud-built
cabins represent a city once so grand and so populous? Can it be that
these half-clad, half-fed peons whom we see about us, exhibiting only a
benighted intelligence, represent Aztecs and Toltecs who are supposed to
have possessed a liberal share of art and culture; a people, whose
astronomers were able to determine for themselves the apparent motion of
the sun and the length of the solar year: who had the art of polishing
the hardest of precious stones; who cast choice and perfect figures of
silver and gold in one piece; and who made delicate filigree ornaments
without solder? These are achievements belonging to quite a high state
of civilization. The cabins consist mostly of one room, in which lives a
whole family, with the bare earth for a floor, the open door often
affording the only light which reaches the interior. There are some
better dwellings here, to be sure; but all are adobe, and this brief
description is applicable to nine tenths of the people and their rude
dwellings.

Cholula has one grand antiquity, which even the ruthless finger of Time
has made little impression upon, being the remains of one of those
remarkable earth-pyramids which was probably built by the Toltecs;
though how they could erect a mountain without beasts of burden is an
endless puzzle. The rains, winds, and storms of ages have opened
crevices in the sides of the artificial hill; but these have only served
to show what la