tands on the
site of an aboriginal city. In the corner of the plaza now occupied by
the cura's house, the yard of which contains the well and cisterns,
once stood a pyramidal mound with a building upon it. The cura had
himself pulled down this mound, and levelled it so that nothing was
left to indicate even the place where it stood. With the materials he
had built the house and cisterns, and portions of the ancient edifice
now formed the walls of the new. With singular good taste, showing his
practical turn of mind, and at the same time a vein of antiquarian
feeling, he had fixed in conspicuous places, when they answered his
purpose, many of the old carved stones. The convent and church occupied
one side of the plaza; along the corridor of the former was a long seat
of time-polished stones taken from the ruins of an ancient building,
and in every quarter might be seen these memorials of the past,
connecting links between the living and the dead, and serving to keep
alive the memory of the fact, which, but for them, would in a few years
be forgotten, that on this spot once stood an ancient Indian city.

But the work upon which the padre prided himself most, and which
perhaps, did him most credit, was the church. It was one of the few the
erection of which had been undertaken of late years, when the time had
gone by for devoting the labour of a whole village to such works; and
it presents a combination of simplicity, convenience, and good taste,
in better keeping with the spirit of the age than the gigantic but
tottering structures in the other villages, while it is not less
attractive in the eyes of the Indians. The cura employed an amanuensis
to write out a description of the church, as he said, for me to publish
in my work, which, however, I am obliged to omit, mentioning only that
over the principal altar were sixteen columns from the ruins at the
_rancho_ of Nohcacab, which were the next we proposed to visit.

During the evening we had a levee of all the principal white
inhabitants, to the number of about six or eight. Among them was the
proprietor of the _rancho_ and ruins of Nohcacab, to whom we were
introduced by the cura, with a tribute to our antiquarian, scientific,
and medical attainments, which showed an appreciation of merit it was
seldom our good fortune to meet with. The proprietor could give us very
little information about the ruins, but undertook to make all the
necessary arrangements for our explorati