86 



zontli, or porous amygdaloid *. This construc- 

 tion recalls to mind that of one of the Egyptian 

 pyramids of Sakharah, which has six stories ; 

 and which, according to Pocock, is a mass of 

 pebbles and yellow mortar, covered on the out- 

 side with rough stones. On the top of the great 

 Mexican teocallis were two colossal statues of 

 the Sun, and the Moon : they were of stone, 

 and covered with plates of gold, of which they 

 were stripped by the soldiers of Cortez. When 

 bishop Zumaraga, a Franciscan monk, under- 

 took the destruction of whatever related to the 

 worship, the history, and the antiquities of the 

 natives of America, he ordered also the demoli- 

 tion of the idols of the plain of Micoatl. We 

 still discover the remains of a staircase built with 

 large hewn stone, which formerly led to the plat- 

 form of the teocalli. 



On the east of the group of the pyramids of 

 Teotihuacan, on descending the Cordillera to- 

 wards the gulf of Mexico, in a thick forest, 

 called Taj in, rises the pyramid of Papantla. 

 This monument was by chance discovered 

 scarcely thirty years ago, by some Spanish 

 hunters ; for the Indians carefully conceal from 

 the whites whatever was an object of ancient 

 veneration. The form of this teocalli, which 



* Mandelstein of the German mineralogists. 



