A TRIP TO MEXICO. 295 



Cortez, in his final capture of the city of Mexico, was obliged 

 to take it as it were by inches, and to destroy and level every- 

 thing as far and as fast as he went, until almost the entire city 

 had disappeared. Then in the rebuilding, which was immedi- 

 ately commenced and carried on in the most substantial manner, 

 it may well be that all the building materials accumulated by the 

 Indians were used up in the new structures. I do not myself 

 think it at all strange that the visible vestiges of the Aztec sites 

 and structures have long since vanished from the thickly peopled 

 and ever changing valley of the Anahuac. 



But these industrious natives have left works which could not 

 be destroyed, and which fully attest the busy swarms of workers 

 that must once have filled this hive of aboriginal races. These 

 are enormous mounds, almost mountains of earth material, piled 

 up in regular pyramids, by the slow and tedious work of human 

 hands. I have climbed them to the height of hundreds of feet ; 

 and I have dug up pockets full of arrow heads and idol heads 

 in the fields about them, wondering all the time how Wilson and 

 his train would account for these evidences, in their abridgment 

 of Indian histories. 



But I cannot follow further this labyrinth of mazy conjecture. 

 Suffice it to say that where such careful students and searchers as 

 Prescott, Eobertson, and Humboldt have not found reason to 

 hesitate, it is ill-timed and mistaken effort now to raise the dicta 

 of doubts. 



But I must leave this land of delightful scenes and of thrilling 

 reminiscences ; and I leave it, as I leave these rambling sketches, 

 with regret. Yet once more before I go I must take a last look 

 at the lovely valley and its rampart of mountains, from the 

 heights of Chapultepec. Here, on the fortress which our brave 

 boys stormed and took in '47, on a standpoint 1,500 feet higher 

 than the storm beaten summit of Mount Washington, one looks 

 out on every side upon lakes and groves and hills and vales the 

 pleasantest panorama the sun ever shone upon. While, at a dis- 

 tance of fifty to a hundred miles, there rise on all the horizon, 

 crests and ridges and mountains, and snow-capped cones of vol- 

 canoes two miles higher even than this lofty table land. Truly 



