i. 355, for the Toltecs as the source of astronomical ideas, with which

compare Bancroft, v. 192; the _Bulletin de la Soc. royale Belge de Géog._, Sept., Oct., 1886; and Bandelier in the _Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii. 572, for a comparison of calendars.

Wilson in his _Prehistoric Man_ (i. 246) says: “By the unaided results of native science, the dwellers on the Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning, according to the unreformed Julian calendar, was really eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily effaced.”

See what Wilson (_Prehistoric Man_, i. 333) says of the native veneration for this calendar stone, when it was exhumed. Mrs. Nuttall (_Proc. Am. Asso. Adv. Sci._, Aug., 1886) claims to be able to show that this monolith is really a stone which stood in the Mexican market-place, and was used in regulating the stated market-days.]

We have reference to a Cholula mound in some of the earliest writers. Bernal Diaz counted the steps on its side.[1009] Motolinía saw it within ten years of the Conquest, when it was overgrown and much ruined. Sahagún says it was built for defensive purposes. Rojas, in his _Relacion de Cholula_, 1581, calls it a fortress, and says the Spaniards levelled its convex top to plant there a cross, where later, in 1594, they built a chapel. Torquemada, following Motolinía and the later Mendieta, says it was never finished, and was decayed in his time, though he traced the different levels. Its interest as a relic thus dates almost from the beginnings of the modern history of the region. Boturini mentions its four terraces. Clavigero, in 1744, rode up its sides on horseback, impelled by curiosity, and found it hard work even then to look upon it as other than a natural hill.[1010] The earliest of the critical accounts of it, however, is Humboldt’s, made from examinations in 1803, when much more than now of its original construction was observable, and his account is the one from which most travellers have drawn,—the result of close scrutiny in his text and of considerable license in his plate, in which he aimed at something like a restoration.[1011] The latest critical examination is in Bandelier’s “Studies about Cholula and its vicinity,” making part iii. of his _Archæological Tour in Mexico in 1881_.[1012]

What are called the finest ruins in Mexico are those of Xochicalco, seventy-five miles southwest of the capital, consisting of a mound of five terraces supported by masonry, with a walled area on the summit. Of late years a cornfield surrounds what is left of the pyramidal structure, which was its crowning edifice, and which up to the middle of the last century had five receding stories, though only one now appears. It owes its destruction to the needs which the proprietors of the neighboring sugar-works have had for its stones. The earliest account of the ruins appeared in the “Descripcion (1791) de los antiqüedades de Xochicalco” of José Antonio Alzate y Ramirez, in the _Gacetas de Literatura_ (Mexico, 1790-94, in 3 vols.; reprinted Puebla, 1831, in 4 vols.), accompanied by plates, which were again used in Pietro Marquez’s _Due Antichi Monumenti de Architettura Messicana_ (Roma, 1804),[1013] with an Italian version of Alzate, from which the French translation in Dupaix was made. Alzate furnished the basis of the account in Humboldt’s _Vues_ (i. 129; pl. ix. of folio ed.), and Waldeck (_Voyage pitt._, 69) regrets that Humboldt adopted so inexact a description as that of Alzate. From Nebel (_Viage pintoresco_) we get our best graphic representations, for Tylor (_Anahuac_) says that Casteñeda’s drawings, accompanying Dupaix, are very incorrect. Bancroft says that one, at least, of these drawings in Kingsborough bears not the slightest resemblance to the one given in Dupaix. In 1835 there were explorations made under orders of the Mexican government, which were published in the _Revista Mexicana_ (i. 539,—reprinted in the _Diccionario Universal_, x. 938). Other accounts, more or less helpful, are given by Latrobe, Mayer,[1014] and in Isador Löwenstern’s _Le Méxique_ (Paris, 1843).[1015]

The ancient Anahuac corresponds mainly to the valley of Mexico city.[1016] Bancroft (iv. 497) shows in a summary way the extent of our knowledge of the scant archæological remains within this central area.[1017]

In the city of Mexico not a single relic of the architecture of the earlier peoples remains,[1018] though a few movable sculptured objects are preserved.[1019]

* * * * *

Tezcuco, on the other side of the lake from Mexico, affords some traces of the ante-Conquest architecture, but has revealed no such interesting movable relics as have been found in the capital city.[1020] Twenty-five miles north of Mexico are the ruins of Teotihuacan, which have been abundantly described by early writers and modern explorers. Bancroft (iv. 530) makes up his summary mainly from a Mexican official account, Ramon Almaraz’s _Memoria de los trabajos ejecutados por la comision cientifica de Pachuca_ (Mexico, 1865), adding what was needed to fill out details from Clavigero, Humboldt, and the later writers.[1021]

Bancroft (iv. ch. 10), in describing what is known of the remains in the northern parts of Mexico, gives a summary of what has been written regarding the most famous of these ruins, Quemada in Zacatecas.[1022]

Bancroft (iv. ch. 7) has given a separate chapter to the antiquities of Oajaca (Oaxaca) and Guerrero, as the most southern of what he terms the Nahua people, including and lying westerly of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and he speaks of it as a region but little known to travellers, except as they pass through a part of it lying on the commercial route from Acapulco to the capital city of Mexico. Bancroft’s summary, with his references, must suffice for the inquirer for all except the principal group of ruins in this region, that of Mitla (or Lyó-Baa), of which a full recapitulation of authorities may be made, most of which are also to be referred to for the lesser ruins, though, as Bancroft points out, the information respecting Monte Alban and Zachila is far from satisfactory. Of Monte Alban, Dupaix and Charnay are the most important witnesses, and the latter says that he considers Monte Alban “one of the most precious remains, and very surely the most ancient of the American civilizations.”[1023] On Dupaix alone we must depend for what we know of Zachila.

It is, however, of Mitla (sometime Miquitlan, Mictlan) that more considerable mention must be made, and its ruins, about thirty miles southerly from Mexico, have been oftenest visited, as they deserve to be; and we have to regret that Stephens never took them within the range of his observations. Their demolition had begun during a century or two previous to the Spanish Conquest, and was not complete even then. Nature is gloomy, and even repulsive in its desolation about the ruins;[1024] but a small village still exists among them. The place is mentioned by Duran[1025] as inhabited about 1450; Motolinía describes it as still lived in,[1026] and in 1565-74 it had a gobernador of its own. Burgoa speaks of it in 1644.[1027]

The earliest of the modern explorers were Luis Martin, a Mexican architect, and Colonel de la Laguna, who examined the ruins in 1802; and it was from Martin and his drawings that Humboldt drew the information with which, in 1810, he first engaged the attention of the general public upon Mitla, in his _Vues des Cordillères_. Dupaix’s visit was in 1806. The architect Eduard L. Mühlenpfordt, in his _Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico_ (Hannover, 1844, in 2 vols.), says that he made plans and drawings in 1830,[1028] which, passing into the hands of Juan B. Carriedo, were used by him to illustrate a paper, “Los palacios antiguos de Mitla,” in the _Ilustracion Mexicana_ (vol. ii.), in which he set forth the condition of the ruins in 1852. Meanwhile, in 1837, some drawings had been made, which were twenty years later reproduced in the ninth volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, as Brantz Mayer’s _Observations on Mexican history and archæology, with a special notice of Zapotec, remains as delineated in Mr. J. G. Sawkins’s drawings of Mitla, etc._ (Washington, 1857). Bancroft points out (iv. 406) that the inaccuracies and impossibilities of Sawkins’ drawings are such as to lead to the conclusion that he pretended to explorations which he never made, and probably drafted his views from some indefinite information; and that Mayer was deceived, having no more precise statements than Humboldt’s by which to test the drawings. Matthieu Fossey visited the ruins in 1838; but his account in his _Le Méxique_ (Paris, 1857) is found by Bancroft to be mainly a borrowed one. G. F. von Tempsky’s _Mitla, a narrative of incidents and personal adventure on a journey in Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador, 1853-1855, edited by J. S. Bell_ (London, 1858), deceives us by the title into supposing that considerable attention is given in the book to Mitla, but we find him spending but a part of a day there in February, 1854 (p. 250). The book is not prized; Bandelier calls it of small scientific value, and Bancroft says his plates must have been made up from other sources than his own observations.[1029] Charnay, here, as well as elsewhere, made for us some important photographs in 1859.[1030] This kind of illustration received new accessions of value when Emilio Herbrüger issued a series of thirty-four fine plates as _Album de Vistas fotográficas de las Antiguas Ruinas de los palacios de Mitla_ (Oaxaca, 1874). In 1864, J. W. von Müller, in his _Reisen in den Vereinigten Staaten, Canada und Mexico_ (Leipzig, in 3 vols.), included an account of a visit.[1031] The most careful examination made since Bancroft summarized existing knowledge is that of Bandelier in his _Archæological Tour in Mexico in 1881_ (Boston, 1885), published as no. ii. of the American series of the _Papers of the Archæological Institute of America_, which is illustrated with heliotypes and sketch plans of the ruins and architectural details in all their geometrical symmetry. Bancroft (iv. 392, etc.) could only give a plan of the ruins based on the sketches of Mühlenpfordt as published by Carriedo, but the student will find a more careful one[1032] in Bandelier, who also gives detailed ones of the several buildings (pl. xvii., xviii.)

* * * * *

There is no part of Spanish America richer in architectural remains than the northern section of Yucatan, and Bancroft (iv. ch. 5) has occasion to enumerate and to describe with more or less fullness between fifty and sixty independent groups of ruins.[1033] Stephens explored forty-four of these abandoned towns, and such was the native ignorance that of only a few of them could anything be learned in Merida. And yet that this country was the land of a peculiar architecture was known to the earliest explorers. Francisco Hernandez de Cordova in 1517, Juan de Grijalva in 1518, Cortés himself in 1519, and Francisco de Montejo in 1527 observed the ruins in Cozumel, an island off the northwest coast of the peninsula, and at other points of the shore.[1034] It is only, however, within the present century that we have had any critical notices. Rio heard reports of them merely. Lorenzo de Zavala saw only Uxmal, as his account given in Dupaix shows. The earliest detailed descriptions were those of Waldeck in his _Voyage pittoresque et achéologique dans la province d’Yucatan_ (Paris, 1838, folio, with steel plates and lithographs), but he also saw little more than the ruins of Uxmal, in the expedition in which he had received pecuniary support from Lord Kingsborough.[1035] It is to John L. Stephens and his accompanying draughtsman, Frederic Catherwood, that we owe by far the most essential part of our knowledge of the Yucatan remains. He had begun a survey of Uxmal in 1840, but had made little progress when the illness of his artist broke up his plans. Accordingly he gave the world but partial results in his _Incidents of Travel in Central America_. Not satisfied with his imperfect examination, he returned to Yucatan in 1841, and in 1843 published at New York the book which has become the main source of information for all compilers ever since, his _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_ (N. Y., 1842; London, 1843; again, N. Y., 1856, 1858). It was in the early days of the Daguerrean process, and Catherwood took with him a camera, from which his excellent drawings derive some of their fidelity. They appeared in his own _Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America_ (N. Y., 1844), on a larger scale than in Stephens’s smaller pages.

Stephens’s earlier book had had an almost immediate success. The reviewers were unanimous in commendation, as they might well be.[1036] It has been asserted that it was in order to avail of this new interest that a resident of New Orleans, Mr. B. M. Norman, hastened to Yucatan, while Stephens was there a second time, and during the winter of 1841-42 made the trip among the ruins, which is recorded in his _Rambles in Yucatan, or Notes of Travel through the peninsula, including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-chen, Kabah Zayi, and Uxmal_ (New York, 1843).[1037]

The Daguerrean camera was also used by the Baron von Friederichsthal in his studies at Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and his exploration seems to have taken place between the two visits of Stephens, as Bancroft determines from a letter (April 21, 1841) written after the baron had started on his return voyage to Europe.[1038] In Paris, in October, 1841, under the introduction of Humboldt, Friederichsthal addressed the Academy, and his paper was printed in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (xcii. 297) as “Les Monuments de l’Yucatan.”[1039] The camera was not, however, brought to the aid of the student with the most satisfactory results till Charnay, in 1858, visited Izamal, Chichen-Itza, and Uxmal. He gave a foretaste of his results in the _Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog_. (1861, vol. ii. 364), and in 1863 gave not very extended descriptions, relying mostly on his _Atlas_ of photographs in his _Cités et Ruines Américaines_, a part of which volume consists of the architectural speculations of Viollet le Duc. Beside the farther studies of Charnay in his _Anciens Villes du Nouveau Monde_ (Paris, 1885), there have been recent explorations in Yucatan by Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife, mainly at Chichen-Itza, in which for a while he had the aid and countenance of Mr. Stephen Salisbury, Jr.,[1040] of Worcester, Mass. Le Plongeon’s results are decidedly novel and helpful, but they were expressed with more license of explication than satisfied the committee of that society, when his papers were referred to them for publication, and than has proved acceptable to other examiners.[1041] Nearly all other descriptions of the Yucatan ruins have been derived substantially from these chief authorities.[1042]

The principal ruins of Yucatan are those of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and references to the literature of each will suffice. Those at Uxmal are in some respects distinct in character from the remains of Honduras and of Chiapas. There are no idols as at Copan. There are no extensive stucco-work and no tablets as at Palenqué. The general type is Cyclopean masonry, faced with dressed stones. The Casa de Monjas, or nunnery (so called), is often considered the most remarkable ruin in Central America; and no architectural feature of any of them has been the subject of more inquiry than the protuberant ornaments in the cornices, which are usually called elephants’ trunks.[1043] It has been contended that the place was inhabited in the days of Cortes.[1044]

The earliest printed account of Uxmal is in Cogolludo’s _Yucathan_ (Madrid, 1688), pp. 176, 193, 197; but it was well into this century before others were written. Lorenzo de Zavala gave but an outline account in his _Notice_, printed in Dupaix in 1834. Waldeck (_Voyage Pitt._ 67, 93) spent eight days there in May, 1835, and Stephens gives him the credit of being the earliest describer to attract attention. Stephens’s first visit in 1840 was hasty (_Cent. Amer._, ii. 413), but on his second visit (1842) he took with him Waldeck’s _Voyage_, and his description and the drawings of Catherwood were made with the advantage of having these earlier drawings to compare. Stephens (_Yucatan_,