ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 69 



Spanish times, lie just outside of the inclosure of the station, and 

 the road has been cut through these leveled works, and through the 

 accumulated refuse of a small suburban village, now represented by 

 a dilapidated church and a few adobe hovels. 



The section exposed by the railway cuttings exhibits a curious 

 agglomeration of the deposits of all past human periods. The re- 

 mains of previous times and peoples — pottery, stone, and skeletons — 

 have recently been redistributed by the greatest of all innovators, 

 the spade of the Yankee. To those, therefore, who halt only to 

 examine the deposits along the immediate line of the railway there 

 is nothing visible but utter confusion, although a glance is sufficient 

 to show that, in every spadeful, there is evidence of many widely 

 separated stages of art. 



Just west of the line, however, and apparently outside of the old 

 line of circumvallation is an area — an acre, more or less — on Avhich 

 an extensive manufactory of adobe bricks has been established. 

 Here excavations have been made exposing the heretofore undis- 

 turbed accumulations of past ages to the depth often of eight or 

 ten feet. 



The general surface of this area is perhaps from three to four feet 

 below the broad masses of ancient ramparts, and is, at the same 

 time, perceptibly elevated above the level of the lacustrine plain 

 about it. It has been stated by a recent writer, that there is proba- 

 bly no spot remaining about the city of Mexico that shows a trace 

 of pre-Spanish structures, but I am convinced that here we have 

 such a spot. The surface is humpy and uneven, the result probably 

 of comparatively recent ditch-digging or house-building ; but there 

 is a gentle arching of the whole area which, taken in connection 

 with the fact that the entire mass is composed very greatly of rem- 

 nants of aboriginal art, seems to warrant my conclusion. Across 

 one side of this area the old Spanish walls were built and the adobe 

 diggers are now encroaching upon the other. So full is the soil of 

 relics, chiefly of pottery, that the workmen are greatly embarrassed 

 in their labors, even to the depth of many feet, and by the side of 

 each pit is a great heap, composed of fragments too large to be 

 worked into the brick. In one place a section is exposed in a con- 

 tinuous vertical wall nearly a hundred feet long and more than 

 eight feet deep. The upper part bears evidence of more or less 

 disturbance, but the greater part of the exposed deposits have re- 

 mained absolutely undisturbed since the day of their deposition. 



