CHAPTER V
THE GIANT PYRAMID-BUILDER
If you travel through that beautiful land of lakes and mountains north of the City of Mexico, you will hardly fail to visit the ancient sacred city of Cholula. Nor can you fail to marvel at the remains of that incredible Pyramid, four times as large as the famous Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.
Cortes and his followers wondered at the fifty-acre structure nearly four centuries back. Humboldt measured it, studied it and speculated about it a hundred years ago. The general belief was that it had always been devoted to the worship of Quetzal, that Fair God of old Mexico. But there were once wise ancients among the Acolhuan Indians who remembered the truth passed down by tradition from times immemorial.
This is the tale of the Pyramid-builder.
As everyone knows, for 4800 years after the creation of the world the land of Anahuac was inhabited by a race of vast giants. (Have not their mighty bones, dwarfing those of modern men, been dug up time and again through the centuries?)
These monsters were enemies both of gods and men. Fierce were the wars waged against them by the people of Tlascala, and many a giant was overcome
by their multitudes, or driven forth into the wilderness to perish of starvation.
Always, however, there were enough of the dreadful race left to keep the land in an uproar; and particularly one Xelhua and his six brothers defied all attempts against them, holding themselves above laws, and doing only that which pleased their own ruthless cruelty. Very crafty as well as very strong they were, and the land of Anahuac groaned beneath their devastating tread. Finding there was none alive who might resist them, they waxed arrogant past belief, and scorned the very gods above, confident that there was no power in earth or heaven which could resist their will.
But at last the heavenly rulers grew wearied of this senseless tumult below. They determined to put an end to it all, and poured forth an overwhelming deluge on the earth. The clouds burst wide and precipitated their inexhaustible reservoirs; the irresistible ocean itself was loosed from its bounds; the underground rivers shot up from beneath the earth upon men and giants alike, and those who were not drowned were transformed into fishes.
All except crafty Xelhua and his six brothers: as the flood from above met the rising sea, they fled northward, climbed the lofty slopes of Mt. Tlaloc and hid themselves in seven caverns within its sides, rolling huge boulders in front of the openings to shut out the waters should they rise so high. Here they lay secure while the deluge raged unchecked throughout the universe.