23C 



CORRECT DIMENSIONS. 



to it as a work of art, forms one of the most picturesque features of 

 the landscape. At a short distance it presents the appearance of a 

 natural mound, covered with a luxuriant growth of trees and shrub- 

 bery, and is surmounted by a simple chapel, whose belfry towers 

 some eighty feet above the pyramid. A road winds round the 

 pyramid from base to summit, up which we passed on horseback. 

 This road is cut into the pyramid, in some places, six or eight feet, 

 and here one sees the first evidence of the artificial construction of 

 the latter. It is built of adobes, or sun-dried brick, interspersed 

 with small fragments of stone — porphyry and limestone. Its dimen- 

 sions, as stated by Humboldt, are : base 1,060, elevation 162 feet; 

 but its altitude is much greater. On the day of our visit, Lieutenant 

 Semmes, of the navy, who had provided himself with a pocket sex- 

 tant and tape-line for the purpose, determined its altitude to be 205 

 feet. As this measurement differed so widely from that of Hum- 

 boldt, Lieut. S. requested Lieut. Beauregard, of the engineers, who 

 visited the pyramid a few days afterwards, to test his observations ; 

 which Lieut. B., using a longer base, did, making the altitude 203 

 feet. These two observations, from different points, with different 

 ba?es, and both with the sextant, show conclusively that Humboldt, 

 who used a barometer, is in error. The mean of the two is 204 

 feet, which we may henceforth regard as the true height of this ex- 

 traordinary monument — being nearly half as great as that of the 

 pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. The pyramid of Cholula is quad- 

 rangular in form, and truncated — the area of the apex being 165 

 feet square. On this area formerly stood a heathen temple, now 

 supplanted by the Gothic church of our Lady ofRemedios. The 

 temple on this pyramid was, in the days of Cortez, a sort of Mecca, 

 to which all the surrounding tribes, far and near, made an annual 

 pilgrimage, held a fair, and attended the horrible human sacrifices 

 peculiar to their superstition. Besides this great temple, there were, 

 as we learn from the letters of Cortez to Charles V., and also from 

 the simple diary of his doughty old Captain, Bernal Diaz, some 400 

 others in the city, built around the base of the larger. The city 

 itself contained 40,000 householders, and the whole plain was 

 studded with populous villages. The plain is now comparatively a 

 desert, and two or three thousand miserable leperos build their mud 

 huts and practice their thievish propensities upon the site of the 

 holy city. 



