In the south-western part of the state, in the Topila hills, near a creek of the same name, is a large group of remains at a locality known as Rancho de las Piedras. Mr Norman, who spent a week in their examination, is the only authority for these remains, and as he was obliged to work alone and unaided, his examination was necessarily superficial. Over an area several miles square the ground is strewn with hewn blocks of stone and fragments of pottery and obsidian. Many of the blocks bear decorative sculptured figures. A female face carved from a block of fine dark reddish sandstone, was brought away by Mr Norman and presented to the New York Historical Society. It is shown in the cut. The face is of life size, very symmetrical in its form, and of a Grecian type. Another monument sketched by the explorer was a stone turtle, six feet long, with a human head. The sculpture, especially of the turtle's shell, is described as very fine; the whole rests on a large block of concrete sandstone, and is called by the finder the American Sphinx. This relic was somewhat damaged, but the features of the human face seemed of a Caucasian rather than a native type.
Stone Face—Topila Ruins.
Colossal Head—Topila Ruins.
The Topila ruins include twenty mounds, both circular and square, from six to twenty-five feet in height, built of earth and faced with uniform blocks of sandstone, eighteen inches square and six inches thick. The facings had for the most part fallen, and that invariably inward in the smaller mounds, indicating perhaps their original use as tombs. Many of the blocks are scattered through the forest in places where the mounds had entirely disappeared. Of all the mounds only one has any trace of a terrace, and in that one it is very faint; and there is no evidence that mortar was employed in laying the stones. The largest covered about two acres, and bore on its summit a wild fig-tree one hundred feet high. At its base is a circular wall of stone, the top of which is even with the surface of the ground—perhaps a well—and which is filled with stones and broken pottery. Its top is covered with a circular stone four feet and nine inches in diameter and seven inches thick, with a hole in its centre and some ornamental lines sculptured on its upper surface. Another round stone, twelve feet in diameter and three feet thick, on the front of which is carved a colossal human head, is shown in the cut. The author speaks vaguely of "vast piles of broken and crumbling stones, the ruins of dilapidated buildings, which were strewed over a vast space;" and his cuts of the relics which I have copied show in the background, not included in my copies, regular walls of hewn stone. Mr Norman regards this group as the remains of a great city, the site of which is now covered by a heavy forest. In another locality, seven miles further north-west on the Topila Creek, and a few miles from the Pánuco River, is another group of circular mounds, one of them twenty-five feet high, and the lower portions faced with flat hewn stones. Hewn blocks of various forms and sizes are also scattered about the locality, but none of them are sculptured.[X-44] Lyon tells us that "remains of utensils, statues, weapons, and even skeletons," have been often found in digging for the foundations of new buildings in the vicinity of Tampico, or Tamaulipas. He made drawings, which he did not publish, of two very perfect basalt idols, and mentioned also some bone carvings and terra-cotta idols found in this region.[X-45] In northern Tamaulipas I find only one mention of aboriginal monuments, and that at Burrita, about twenty miles east from Matamoras, respecting which locality Berlandier says, "on a small hill which is seen two or three hundred paces from the rancho of Burrita are found in abundance (as the rancheros say) the bones of ancient peoples."[X-46]
BOLSON DE MAPIMI.
BURIAL CAVES.