446 REVIEWS—A NEW HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 
style of magnificence commensurate with the foregoing outline. Such statements: 
only had the author seen, when he undertook its survey. He had not then heard 
or read of the suggestion of Torquemada, though copied into one of the notes of 
Robertson. ‘The large mound of earth at Cholula, which the Spaniards dignified 
with the name of temple, still remains, without any steps by which to ascend, or 
any facing of stone. It appears now like a mound, covered with grass and shrubs, 
and possibly it was never anything more.” The striking resemblance of this to 
the mounds scattered through the country of our northern tribes, satisfied us of 
their common origin, and that this, like the others, was but an Indian burying 
place, formed by the deposition of earth upon the top of a sharp conical hill, as 
often as fresh bodies were interred, and thisis probably the fact. Its greater 
size is doubtless attributable to its situation in the midst of a most fertile plain, 
[vega] where from generation to generation a dense popolation must have dwelt, 
who used this as the common receptacle of their dead. The appearance of that 
structure, which Humboldt and other Europeans have considered a monument of. 
antique art, is readily explained by opposing facts. familiar only to Americans, to 
the scientific speculations of foreigners! But to this one there is now no ques- 
tion: an excavation having been made into the side of the mound, it revealed that 
truth which we only surmised. The only ruins at Cholula are those of several 
Spanish convents, abandoned by the religious for others in the more congenial, 
because more polluted atmosphere of Puebla, six miles distant. The villageis a 
collection of adobe huts, such as it doubtless was in the time of Cortez, and all the 
appearance of art about “the pyramid” is the modern church upon its crest. 
- There is one reference here to which we would direct the reader’s 
attention as of no slight importance. Torquemada, a Provincial of 
the Franciscan order, visited the New World about the middle of 
the sixteenth century, and was in close intercourse with many who 
had personally shared in the dangers and the triumphs of Cortez. 
He resided im the country for fifty years, and as the zealous chronicler 
of all that related to Mexican antiquities, he must have been an 
observant witness of any remarkable native monuments that came 
under his notice. If, then, the ‘suggestion of Torquemada’’ copied 
by Robertson, and repeated by our author, with careful references 
(Torquemada, Liber III., c. 19. Note to Robertson, No. 194,) be 
correct, there is an end to the matter as far as the pyramid of Cholula 
is concerned. If Torquemada, whose whole history is written to sus- 
tain the narratives of Cortes and Bernal Diaz, nevertheless admits: 
that in the sixteenth century the Cholula pyramid was a mere earth= 
mound, it does not require the authority of a traveller of the nine~ 
teenth century to assure us that it is no more now. But, Torque- 
mada’s original volumes not being accessible, we have had the curiosity 
to refer to Robertson’s notes. In one (note 37) the historian states. 
