de, and protected the sides of his steps from falling
earth by walls of adobe, or mud-brick; and on the west side some adobe
buttresses have been placed to keep the loose earth out of the village
street. This is all of man's labor that is visible, except the work of
the Indians in shaving away the hill which constitutes this pyramid. As
for the great city of Cholula, it never had an existence; for if there
had been, only three hundred years ago, such a city here, composed of
40,000 houses, with 400 towers, besides the 400 mosques, then some
vestige or fragment of a fallen wall or a ruined tower would still be
visible. But I searched in vain for the slightest evidence of former
magnificence, and was driven to the unwelcome conclusion that the whole
city was fabricated out of some miserable Indian village, inferior,
perhaps, to the present town of one-story, whitewashed mud huts.

My contemplations were broken in upon by a swarm of squalid women and
children from the church vestry, importuning me to buy relics in clay,
which might answer the double purpose of images of saints or of heathen
gods, according to the taste of the purchaser. But when they found me
impracticable, they brought out their greatest curiosity--a flint
arrow-head, such as used to be plowed up in scores near the place where
I was born. Thoroughly disgusted with the sight of this Acropolis, with
this ancient Athens of mud, I turned my horse's head toward Puebla; and
as I rode on, I met scores of these modern Athenians trotting homeward,
bare-headed and bare-footed, carrying "papooses" on their backs, while
their faces, forms, and hair, and ragged dress, were the very
counterpart of the Indians of North America.

The Indians of Puebla have long enjoyed the distinguished honor of
being the governing men, while the white inhabitants were ineligible to
a seat in the city councils. This city was formerly an Indian village,
bearing the indigestible name of Cuetlaxcapen, or "Snake in the Water;"
but, in 1530, the Vice-King Mendoza established here a Spanish colony,
but left the original government unchanged; so that, down to the
independence, the city administration was conducted by an Indian
alcalde, assisted by a council of four Indians. Notwithstanding the
anomalous form of its government, Puebla has ever been a great
manufacturing town, and at this day consumes a quantity of cotton equal
to some of our large manufacturing cities.

[11] The living w