ast ages by King Chaltzantzin, but also the treasure belonging
to the State and to the temple that had been accumulated in later times.

At the entrance to the court-yard, where the way was closed by a metal
grating over which a heavy curtain hung, the soldiers formally
relinquished us into the charge of a company of priests; and then the
curtain was drawn aside and the grating was raised, and we passed out
into the bright sunlight--and saw close before us the place which for so
long a time had so largely filled our thoughts. It was a building of no
great size, being but a single story high, and was dwarfed by the vastly
stupendous cliffs which so far overtopped it that they seemed to extend
upward to the very sky; but it was most massively constructed, and the
actual available space within it was far greater than was indicated by
the relatively small dimensions of its exterior walls. When we entered
the building, through a narrow opening protected by a metal grating, the
chamber into which we came was of so considerable a size that a part of
it, we perceived, must extend actually into the cliff; and that the work
of quarrying out the living rock had been carried still farther was
shown by an opening at its rear end that evidently gave access to some
hollow depth beyond.

It was towards this inner recess that our guards led us. Here another
grating was raised that we might pass, and we went onward through a
narrow passage cut in the rock, along the sides of which were many
openings giving access to small cell-like rooms. Nor was this place, as
we had expected to find it, wholly dark; for narrow slits had been cut
through the rock out to the face of the cliff, through which came so
much light that we could see about us very well. And but for that
blessed light, faint though it was, I doubt not that we should have gone
mad there; and even with the light to cheer and to comfort us I felt a
black despair settling down upon me at the thought of being thus
imprisoned within the very bowels of the mountain, with no possibility
of other release than being taken thence to die.

At the extreme end of the passage the rock had been hollowed away
smoothly and carefully so as to form a chamber nearly thirty feet square
and at least twenty feet high, whereof all the walls were covered with
plates of gold which overlapped each other in the manner of fishes'
scales; and advantage had been taken of some wide crevice or deep
depression