24 MEXICAN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY. 



gular, faces due north and south, and measures sixty-four feet on the northern front 

 above the plinth, and fifty-eight on the western. The distance between the plinth 

 and frieze is about ten feet, the breadth of the frieze three and a half feet, and the 

 height of the cornice one foot five inches. 



The most perfect portion is the northern front, and here the sculpture in relief 

 on the pyramid is between three and four inches deep and distinctly perfect. The 

 massive stones, some of which are seven feet long and two feet six inches broad, 

 are all laid upon each other without cement, and kept together simply by the weight 

 of the incumbent mass. 



The dimensions of the fragments of so fine a structure will give the reader an 

 idea of the ingenuity as well as the labor employed in its building; for it must be 

 recollected that the aboriginal skill was not taxed in the shaping or adornment of 

 the stones in a neighboring quarry, but that the weighty materials were drawn 

 from a considerable distance and carried up a hill 300 feet high, without the use of 

 horses. The sculptures on this monument are somewhat rude and grotesque, but 

 they appear to resemble the images delineated in the works of Stephens and 

 Catherwood, as found by them in Yucatan and Chiapas. There seems to be no 

 doubt, from the lines and irregularity of the stones, that the reliefs were cut after 

 the pyramid was erected. 



Besides the external works of pyramid and terraces, it is said that the interior 

 of the hill was hollowed into chambers. Some years since a party of gentlemen, 

 under orders from the Mexican government, explored the subterranean portions, 

 and, after groping through narrow passages, whose walls were covered with a hard 

 glistening gray cement, they came to three entrances between two huge pillars cut 

 in the mountain rock. Through these portals they entered a chamber, whose 

 roof was a regular cupola built of stones ranged in diminishing circles, while, at 

 the top of the dome was an aperture which probably led to the surface of the earth 

 or to the summit of the pyramid. Nebel, who visited the ruins some years ago, 

 relates, as an Indian tradition, that this aperture was immediately above an altar 

 placed in the centre of the chamber, and that the sun's rays fell directly on the 

 centre of the shrine when the luminary was vertical ! This idea is perhaps a fair 

 specimen of the traditions and guesses with which ingenious archaeologists bewilder 

 themselves and their readers. 1 



1 See Revesta Mejicana, I, 539. Mexico; Aztec, Spanish, and Republican, II, 284. Nebel, Voy- 

 age Archseologique et Pittoresque : Plate — Xochicalco. 



