MEXICO. 



133 



depth in this central part of the city, a vast quantity of 

 these coiossal and curious remains of a forgotten people 

 lie hidden from the day. 



So little was De Gama's admirable treatise upon these 

 monuments understood or appreciated, that he had but 

 one hundred and seventy-two subscribers for his pam- 

 phlet of one hundred and sixteen pages ; and it is doubt- 

 ful whether he found sufficient encouragement to pub- 

 lish a second treatise upon the Calendar and other mon- 

 uments subsequently found, as he hints his intention of 

 doing, in case that the sale of his first adventure covered 

 the expense of the impression and the plates. 



He gives (page 110) a description of a cluster of most 

 curiously sculptured rocks, discovered in the Cerro of 

 Chapultepec, in the year 1775, while labourers were 

 carrying on certain excavations. After a most careful 

 examination, he conceived them to form part of an astro- 

 nomical contrivance, by which the ancient Mexicans 

 were enabled to determine the meridian, the exact time 

 of sunrise and sunset at the equinoxes, and thus the 

 true time throughout the year. In recording, on his next 

 return to Chapultepec, the utter annihilation of these 

 valuable relics of an extraordinary people, he feelingly 

 exclaims, " How many precious monuments of antiquity 

 have thus perished through ignorance !" # 



LETTER VII. 



Our allotted period of sojourn in the country, which 

 we now felt to be lamentably brief, passed swiftly away 

 amid the excitement of our position ; and, urged by the 

 feeling that necessity would compel us to leave Mexico 

 at the commencement of May, we prepared, early in 



* Quantos preciosos monumentos de la antiqiiedad per falta de intel- 

 ligensia, habran parecido an esta manera ! 



M 



