With this circumstantial account of the pyramids in his hand, Mr*' 

 Bullock could obtain no information of them in Mexico. Some of the 

 best informed persons had, indeed, heard of them, but supposed M. de 

 Humboldt had been imposed on, and taken his description from others 

 who had not themselves seen them. Certain that this could not be 

 the case, Mr. Bullock determined to proceed in search of them, as 

 from their nature it was impossible they could escape diligent investi- 

 gation. All inquiry on the road, however, was without effect, and it 

 was not till the end of the second day's journey, just on entering 

 Otumba, that the travellers caught a glimpse of these Mountains of 

 human erection, in the valley beyond the town. They appeared be- 

 fore them in the morning to the greatest advantage, towering above 

 the woods of Nopal, with which they are surrounded ; and the plat- 

 forms or separate stages, perfectly visible at the distance of two miles. 



cated to the Sun (Touatiuh) and to the Moon (Meztli); and these are 

 surrounded by several -hundreds of small pyramids, which form streets in 

 exact lines from north to south, and from east to west. Of these two 

 great Teocallis, one is fifty-five, the other forty-four meters in perpen- 

 dicular height. The basis of the first is two hundred and eight meters in 

 length; whence it results, that the Touatiuh Yztaqual, according to Mr. 

 Oteyza's measurement, made in 1833, is higher than the Mycerians, or 

 third of the three great pyramids of Geeza in Egypt, and the length of its 

 base nearly equal to that of the Cephren. The small pyramids, which 

 surround the great houses of the sun and moon, are scarcely nine or ten 

 meters high; and served according to the tradition of the natives, as 

 burial-places for the chiefs of the tribes. Around the Cheops and the 

 Mycerians in Egypt, are eight small pyramids placed with symmetry, 

 and parallel to the fronts of the greater. The two Teocallis of Teoti- 

 huacan had four principal stories, each of which was subdivided into 

 steps, the edges of which are still to be distinguished. The nucleus is 

 composed of clay mixed with small stones, and it is encased by a thick 

 wall of tezontli, or porous amygdaloid. This construction recalls to 

 mind that, 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 outside with rough stones. On the top of the 

 great Mexican Teocallis, were two colossal statues of the Sun and Moon : 

 they were of stone, and covered with plates of gold, of which they were 

 stripped by the soldiers of Cortes. When Bishop Zumaraga, a Fran- 

 ciscan monk, undertook the destruction of whatever related to the wor- 

 ship, the history, and the antiquities of the natives of America, he ordered 

 also the demolition of the Idols of the plain of Micoal. We still discover 

 the remains of a staircase built with large hewn stones which formerly led 

 to the platform of the Teocalli." 



