NOTES FROM THE CRADLE OF OUR CIVILIZATION. 661 
when the bloody wave of Spanish conquest swept up its spacious stairway, it was 
in perfect repair and bore on its summit a magnificent temple. The worthy de- 
scendants of the Goths and Vandals who followed the adventurous Cortez did 
not hesitate to apply the lever and torch to this shrine of native piety with de- 
structive effect; yet the eminent Humboldt was enabled in 1803 to still discover 
the original form and dimensions of the great pyramid. Rising from a base about 
1440 feet square, carefully oriented, the structure was carried in four equal ter- 
races to a height of nearly two hundred feet, and a platform nearly two hundred 
feet square occupied its summit. The ground covered by its base was nearly 
forty-eight acres in extent, while the pyramid of Cheops covers but little over 
thirteen acres ; the latter, however, is more than twice the height of its American 
rival. Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, but like the one at Ninevah called the 
temple of Belus, the Cholulan edifice was constructed of adobes or sun-dried 
bricks. These are about fifteen inches long and are laid in regular courses with 
layers of clay between and the pyramid was faced with a cement composed of 
sand and lime which is now, wherever perceptible, as hard as stone. 
Like the temple mounds of the north, this structure was used for sepulchral 
as well as devotional purposes; the persons interred therein having been, in all 
probability, priests or grandees. 
The chroniclers of the Spanish conquest are full of ejaculatory expressions of 
admiration at the beauty and grandeur of the temple which surmounted the 
mound of Cholula. Strangely enough, however, they failed to describe a single 
feature of the edifice, and we can only take our enthusiasm over it at second- 
hand. On the spot where this temple once stood, and where the holy fire sent 
up its wreaths of smoke by day, and gleamed undying through the night, a chapel 
has been erected in honor of the Virgin Mary. And its bell now summons to 
worship at the shrine of the Fair God and his immaculate mother, the descendants 
of those who of old invoked with prayers and chants, and propitiated with sacri- 
fices of sweet flowers, the wise, the beneficient, the adorable Saviour of men, 
Quetzalcohuatl. 
NOTES FROM THE CRADLE OF OUR CIVILIZATION. 
PROF. O. T. MASON, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
How dififerent has the study of history become since we were children. 
Nothing was more irksome to us than the memorizing of names and dates, and 
the records of events that seemed to have no connection. The bookmakers, 
even then, had the good sense to gratify our love of the marvelous by saving the 
myths and dreadful stories which had come to them. Of course, it was the 
Germans who began first to study history critically, and to take away our dear 
old myths until the narrative was reduced to bare bones, sure enough. We were 
worse off than before, — this was the age of demolition. A new era has dawned 
