cessary to be
described.--The sides of all the pyramids here constructed correspond
with the cardinal points of the compas.[TN-4] The pyramids that we have
referred to are all patterned after those constructed upon the banks of
the Nile, and are all found about the west border of Yucatan, about the
north border of Guatamala[TN-5] and south of the centre of the great
Republic of Mexico.

It will be well to remember that the mountains and plains of North
America cover millions of square miles north and east of the country
where these pyramids have been constructed, and that those mountains and
plains are covered in many places with earth mounds of an almost
inconceivable variety of forms, and yet the form of the pyramid seems
to be utterly unknown on the Western Continent, except in the narrow
region that we have delineated. We might, perhaps, be justified in
asking: From what people on earth could this building of pyramids be
copied except from those dwelling upon the banks of the Nile?

THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE PEOPLES WHO CONSTRUCTED THE WONDERFUL
PREHISTORIC TOWERS AND TEMPLES UPON THE CONTINENT OF AMERICA.

They were the worshipers of Baal, the god worshiped by the Phoenicians,
and paid their devotions to him with the same rites that they practiced
wherever their influence was effective.

It will be remembered that Baal was supposed to exist and was worshiped
as a being of biform existence. In his beneficent qualities, as the sun,
he was supposed to be the author and sustainer of all life and the
fountain of all pleasures. In his sterner character wherein he was known
as Moloch or Molech, by the children of Israel, he was the most cruel,
stern, relentless monster that the imagination of man ever depicted, and
his votaries everywhere sought to conciliate him by presenting him with
the most horrid scenes of human agony. Attempts were everywhere made to
conciliate him by laying human captives upon his altar, and for want of
captives taken in war, such peaceful citizens as the priests saw fit to
select.

Human victims were constantly dying upon a thousand altars not only in
Phoenicia, but in all western and north-western Europe.

It was firmly believed by the votaries of Moloch that he could be most
readily conciliated by the offering of children upon the altars, that he
most especially delighted in the sacrifice of the first born of every
family. Men thus offering "the fruit of their bodies for the sin of
th