While Quemada does not compare as a specimen of advanced art with Uxmal and Palenque, and is inferior so far as sculpture and decoration are concerned to most other Nahua architectural monuments, it is yet one of the most remarkable of American ruins, presenting strong contrasts to all the rest, and is well worthy of a more careful examination than it has ever yet received. Such an examination is rendered comparatively easy by the accessibility of the locality, and would, I have no doubt, be far from unprofitable in an antiquarian point of view. Los Edificios, like Copan and Palenque, have, so far as has yet been ascertained, no place in the traditional annals of the country, yet they bear no marks of very great antiquity; that is, there is more reason to class them with Xochicalco, Quiotepec, Monte Alban, and the fortified towns of Vera Cruz, than with the cities of Yucatan and Chiapas, or even the pyramids of Teotihuacan and Cholula.
At San Juan Teul, nearly a hundred miles southward from Quemada, the Spaniards found a grand aboriginal temple when they first came to this part of the country; and Frejes, an early writer, says, "there are ruins of a temple and of dwellings not far from the present pueblo." There is, however, no later information respecting this group of remains. At a place called Tabasco, about fifty miles from Quemada, Esparza mentions the discovery of some stone axes. No other antiquities have been definitely reported in the state of Zacatecas, although Arlegui tells us that the early missionaries were much troubled, and hindered in their work of conversion by the constant discovery of idols and temples concealed in the mountains.[X-39]
AGUASCALIENTES AND SAN LUIS POTOSÍ.
I have no record of any relics of antiquity in the state of Aguascalientes: San Luis Potosí has hardly proved a more fruitful field of archæological research. Mayer gives a cut representing a stone axe from this state; Cabrera reports some ancient tombs, or cuicillos,—which he calls cuiztillos; the word being written differently by different authors, and as applied to different states—in the suburbs of the city of San Luis Potosí; and according to a newspaper report two idols and a sacrificial basin, cut from a concrete sandstone, were found in the sierra near the city and brought to New Orleans. One of the idols was of life size, had two faces and a hole for the insertion of a torch in its right hand; the basin was two feet in diameter, and held by intertwined serpents.[X-40]
In southern Tamaulipas relics are quite abundant and of a nature very much the same as that of those which have already been described south of the Rio Pánuco, the boundary line between Tamaulipas and Vera Cruz. At Encarnacion, in the vicinity of Tampico, Mr Furber reports the stone idol shown in front and profile view in the cut. The sculpture is described as rude, and with the idol, three feet high, were dug up several implements and utensils.[X-41] Near a small salt lake between Tula and Santa Barbara, Mr Lyon found a ruined pyramidal mound of hard earth or clay, faced with flat unhewn stones, with similar stones projecting and forming steps leading up the slope on one side. This pyramid is thirty paces in circumference at the base, and is divided by a terrace into two stories, the lower of which is twenty feet high, and the upper in its present state ten feet. Some stone and terra-cotta images have been taken from this mound, and another much smaller but similar structure is reported to exist somewhere in the same vicinity.[X-42]
Idol from Tamaulipas.
On the Tamissee River, which flows into Tampico Bay, traces of ancient towns have been found in two localities near the Carmelote Creek. They consist of scattered hewn blocks of stone, covered with vegetable mold and overgrown with immense trees and rank vegetation. At one of these localities the remains include seventeen large earthen mounds, with traces of a layer of mortar at the bottom. In them have been found broken pottery, rudely carved images of natural size in sandstone, and idols and heads in terra cotta. Mr Norman gives cuts representing two of these heads.[X-43]
TOPILA REMAINS.