CHAPTER VIII.
Some interesting facts in our own country in connexion with these Pyramids. Pyramids of Micocatl in Mexico, and of Quanhuahuac and Cholula. Their history. Notices of a deluge, and confusion of languages, in the picture writing of Mexico. Pyramids in the Polynesian islands. “High Places” of Scripture. Temple of Belus. Universality of this kind of structure explained. Our western mounds. View from the Pyramids of Ghizeh. The Sphinx. Visit to the plain of Memphis, and the Military and Naval School at Toura.
We are stretched on the sand in a tomb at Ghizeh, gazing on the solemn and dreamy figures every where painted on its walls. They carry our thoughts back to the ancient days, and a spirit of musing steals gently over us. What is the origin of the Pyramids? Nay, start not, kind reader, for I am not going to enter into a disquisition on this worn-out subject, or to rake up old theories, but to mention a few circumstances connecting it with our own country, which have always appeared to me to be extremely interesting, and which do not seem to have received the attention that they deserve. It would be somewhat strange if the obscurity which has hung over these monuments from the earliest times should be cleared away by discoveries in this new country of ours.
About twenty-four miles east of the city of Mexico, in a plain, called by the aborigines, Micocatl, or the Path of the Dead, are two Pyramids, one 180, the other 144 feet in height, the former being 676 feet on each side, at the base. They are constructed of clay mixed with small stones, which was encrusted on the outside with a thick coating of porous amygdaloid. They presented four stories or platforms, each considerably narrower than the one next below; and on the top were originally two colossal statues of stone, covered with plates of gold, designed to represent the sun and moon. They are surrounded by several borders of smaller pyramids, about thirty feet in height, forming streets, which run exactly in the direction of the four cardinal points.
Eastward from these, as we descend the Cordilleras, towards the gulf of Mexico, is the Pyramid of Papantla. It had seven stories, and was higher in proportion to its width than any other in the country, being 59 feet in elevation, and 82 feet on each side at the base. It was built entirely of hewn stones, of extraordinary size, regularly shaped and neatly fitted together. It had three staircases, each leading to the summit; and the stairs were ornamented with hieroglyphics, and small niches symmetrically arranged.
South-eastward from the ancient city of Quanhuahuac, on the western declivity of the Cordillera of Anahuac, rises an isolated mass of rock, 358 feet in height, shaped by human labor into a regular conic form. It has five stories or terraces, the sides of which incline inward as they ascend, each being covered above with masonry; the uppermost of these is 236 feet from north to south, and 315 from east to west; and is encircled by a wall of hewn stone six feet and a half in height. The base of the hill is also surrounded by a deep and very wide ditch, whose outer circumference measures nearly two miles and a half. In the centre of the upper natural platform was a Pyramid of five stories, of which only one now remains. It faces exactly the four cardinal points, and is on one side 67, and on the other 57 feet in extent. The stones of which it is composed are regular in shape, fitted neatly together, and are covered with hieroglyphics, each figure occupying several stones; among them we discovered heads of crocodiles spouting water, and men sitting cross legged, as is the custom in Eastern nations.
But the greatest, and perhaps the most ancient of the Pyramids of this country, is one on the plain of Cholula, which is separated from the valley of Mexico by a chain of volcanic mountains, extending from Popocatepetl towards Rio Frio and the peak of Telapor. This Pyramid was also so constructed as to face exactly the four cardinal points, and had a base of 1449 feet on each side; it rose by four terraces, and had an elevation of 164 feet. It was built of unbaked bricks, three inches thick by fifteen in length, alternating with layers of clay. In some places it has been penetrated, and chambers have been laid open, in one of which were found two skeletons, idols of basalt, and a great variety of vases, polished and varnished. On the summit of this Pyramid was an altar dedicated to Quatzee, the god of the air.
These Pyramids of Mexico were in existence when this region was conquered by the Aztecks, in the year 1190 of our era; and were attributed by the conquerors to their predecessors, the Toltecks, a powerful and highly civilized nation, who had obtained possession of the country about the year A.D. 648. But whether they were not built by another people long anterior to the Toltecks, it is now impossible to say, though it appears probable that they were.