ANTIQUITIES IN VERA CRUZ. 373 



the loose virtue of their women) it woukl seem would be particularly 

 prevalent, do not appear to attack them at all. At least, not one of 

 these cases among them has been brought to my notice. 



ACCOTOT OF ANTIQUITIES L\ THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ, MEXICO. 



By Hugo Fixck, of Cordova. 



A few general remarks relative the traces left by the aborigines of 

 this neighborhood may not be uninteresting. As a resident of twenty- 

 eight years in this part of the country, (Cordova, Huatusco, and Mero- 

 dor,) and during my many botanical excursions, I have had good oppor- 

 tunities to examine them. These traces are of two kinds — the first be- 

 longing to a semi-barbarous ; the second to a half-civilized people, who, 

 for a long period of years, must have lived together as neighbors, but 

 in a state of continual dissensions. 



Like the actual descendants of the Aztecs, the semi-barbarous people 

 built their houses, or rather huts, of light timber, covering the roof with 

 palm-leaves or dried grass. Nothing else was required by them in a 

 tropical climate, where the thermometer never descends below 55° 

 Fahrenheit. Of such constructions no trace whatever is left, and if it 

 were not for the innumerable mounds of stone of different dimensions, 

 some united, others isolated, and which were always annexed to their 

 dwellings, we would come to the conclusion, either that they had no 

 dwellings, or that the country was very thinly inhabited. The very 

 contrary was the case. There is hardly a foot of ground in the whole 

 state of Vera Cruz in which, by excavation, either a broken obsidian 

 knife, or a broken piece of pottery is not found. The whole country is 

 intersected with parallel lines of stones, which were intended, during 

 the heavy showers of the rainy season, to keep the earth from washing 

 away. The number of those lines of stones shows clearly that even the 

 poorest land, which in our days nobody would cultivate, was put under 

 requisition by them ; furthermore, when we consider that their imple- 

 ments of agriculture were very primitive or almost null, requiring a so 

 much larger space of ground for their sustenance, we must come to the 

 conclusion that the population must have been immense, or at least as 

 large as the most populated districts of Europe. In this part of the 

 country no trace of iron or copper tools has ever come under my notice. 

 Their implements of husbandry and war were of hard stone,. but gen- 

 erally of obsidian and of wood. 



The small mounds of stones near their habitations have the form of a 

 parallelogram, and are not over twenty-seven inches high. Their length 

 is from five to twelve yards, their width from two to four. On search- 

 ing into them nothing is found. A second class of mounds is round, in 

 the form of a cone, always standing singly. They are built of loose 



