Monsieur Ampère remarks, with considerable tact and cleverness, that the imagination of the Arabs has surrounded with prodigies, the, to them, unknown cradle of the Egyptian pyramids, whose construction they refer to the deluge; and the same was the case in Mexico. On this subject he relates a tradition picked up in 1566, by Pedro del Río, about the pyramids of Cholula, and preserved in his MSS., which are now in the Vatican.
We will in our turn, make a loan from the celebrated savant, and relate here this tradition, such as he gives it in his Promenades en Amérique.
"During the last great inundation, the country of Anahuac (the plateau of Mexico), was inhabited by giants. All those who did not perish in this disaster, were changed into fishes, except seven giants who took refuge in the caverns. When the waters began to subside, one of these giants, of the name of Xelhua, who was an architect, erected near Cholula, in memory of the mountain of Tlaloc, which had served as a refuge to him and his brothers, an artificial column of a pyramidal form. The gods, seeing with jealousy, this edifice, whose peak was intended to touch the clouds, and irritated by the audacity of Xelhua, hurled the heavenly fires against the pyramid, whence it happened, that many of the builders perished, and the work could not be completed. It was dedicated to the god of the air, 'Qualzalcoatl.'"
Might we not fancy ourselves reading the Biblical account of the building of the Tower of Babel?
There is in this narrative an error, which must not be imputed to the celebrated professor, but which we, in spite of our humble quality of romance writer, believe it useful to rectify.
Quetzalcoatl—the serpent covered with feathers, the root of which is quetzalli feathers, and coatl serpent, and not qualzalcoatl, which means nothing, and is not even a Mexican name—is the god of the air, the god legislator par excellence; he was white and bearded, his black cloak was studded with red crosses, he appeared at Tula, of which place he was high priest; the men who accompanied him wore black garments, in the shape of a cassock, and like him, were white.
He was passing through Cholula, on his way to the mysterious country whence his ancestors sprang, when the Cholulans implored him to govern them and give them laws; he consented, and remained for twenty years among them. After which, considering his mission temporarily terminated, he went to the mouth of the river Huasacoalco, when he suddenly disappeared, after solemnly promising the Cholulans that he would return one day to govern them.
Hardly a century ago the Indians, when carrying their offspring to the Chapel of the Virgin erected on the pyramid, still prayed to Quetzalcoatl, whose return among them they piously awaited, we will not venture to assert that this belief is completely extinct at the present day.
The pyramid of Cholula in no way resembles those to be seen in Egypt, covered with earth on all sides; it is a thoroughly wooded mount, the top of which can be easily reached, not only on horseback, but in a carriage.
At certain spots landslips had laid bare the sun-dried bricks employed in the construction.