140 



TEZCOZINGO. 



driven the nose of his ploughshare, demolishing a few of 

 his teeth ; and as he was pronounced worth carriage, he 

 was henceforth, under the high-sounding name of Huit- 

 zilipoctli, accommodated with a seat in the coach, by the 

 side of his purchaser. 



We now turned our attention towards the conical 

 mountain of Tezcozingo, an inferior spur of the great 

 chain to the east ; and skirting the town of Tezcuco, 

 bore off in that direction. The country exhibited many 

 plantations of maguey, and the villages were interspersed 

 with hedges of tall organ cactus. Long before we got 

 to the church of La Navidad, which at a distance seemed 

 close under the steep and pointed hill upon which the 

 object of our search, the Baiio de Montezuma, was situ- 

 ated, it became apparent that night would overtake us 

 in the midst of our excursion. But nothing daunted, we 

 galloped forward over the great plain ; and under the 

 direction of an Indian guide, whose assistance was se- 

 cured at the last village, and crossing a deep barranca, 

 we began to ascend the mountain through the scattered 

 plantations of nopal and maguey. Fragments of pottery, 

 and broken pieces of obsidian knives and arrows; pieces 

 of stucco, shattered terraces, and old walls, were thickly 

 dispersed over its whole surface. We soon found farther 

 advance on horseback impracticable ; and attaching our 

 patient steeds to the nopal bushes, we followed our In- 

 dian guide on foot ; scrambling upward, over rock and 

 through tangled brushwood. On gaining the narrow 

 ridge which connects the conical hill with one at the rear, 

 we found the remains of a wall and causeway ; and a 

 little higher, reached a recess, where, at the foot of a 

 small precipice, overhung with Indian fig and grass, the 

 rock had been wrought by hand into a flat surface of 

 large dimensions. In this perpendicular wall of rock, a 

 carved Toltec Calendar existed formerly; but the Indians 

 finding the place visited occasionally by foreigners from 

 the capital, took it into their heads that there must be a 

 silver vein there ; and straightway set to work to find it, 

 obliterating the sculpture, and driving a level beyond it 

 into the hard rock for several yards. 



