5 The American aloe.
Pulque is intoxicating to those who use it too freely. The taste is far from pleasant to me, and the odor of it is sickening; but it improves with use, and when taken moderately is thought to be wholesome.
The Agave Americana is a most valuable plant. Independently of its agricultural profits upon barren soils where little else would grow, it serves a great variety of uses. From pulque, a strong brandy is distilled. This and pulque are the common drink of the people. The fibres of the leaf of the maguey are manufactured into coarse cloths, which are used for bagging, as saddlecloths, and for the aparejos, packsaddles; they form thread of every texture, twine, and rope of the largest size; and the juice of the leaf is efficacious in the cure of ulcers, especially of the galls and sores of brute animals: the leaf itself acts in place of gutters and spouts for the cabins of the Indians, and makes a roof to their rude dwellings: its prickle or thorn, is a needle in case of necessity; and at certain stages of its growth the maguey may be taken as food, and was so used during the revolution by many hungry wanderers.
Thus this plant may be the food, drink, and clothing of the Mexicans; and from the variety of purposes to which it may be applied, the Agave Americana may safely be said to be the most valuable of the vegetable creation.
It was dark when we returned to our lodgings in Otumba, having consumed the whole day in seeing what we might have accomplished in a few hours; but our friends were so polite, that we were obliged to submit to their dilatory movements.
DEC. 30. Provided again with horses, we set out at an early hour for the Pyramids, leaving our carriage to join us at San Juan de Teotihuacan. After a ride of nearly two leagues, we alighted at the foot of the smaller pyramid, which, although the ascent was steep, rough, and overgrown with weeds, we soon surmounted. This, more dilapidated than the larger one, still preserves its pyramidal shape, so as easily to be distinguished. The construction seems to be of stones thrown indiscriminately together, and, at occasional intervals, a layer of lime crosses it horizontally. Upon its summit are the remains of a small stone building, which bears abundant evidence of being the work of the Conquerors. It was probably a chapel, built to fill the place of the temple which it usurped. At the southern foot of this pyramid is a circle surrounded either by diminutive pyramids, or by the ruins of small edifices, or perhaps both intermingled. Near the centre of this circle is a similar ruin, from which proceeds a regular street forty or fifty feet wide, running north and south, and bounded on both sides by ruins of apparently small pyramids, on which are distinct traces of the walls of houses divided into small apartments. At the head of the street is a large rough stone, with a circle sculptured on one side of it; beyond the wall of this circle, on the west, we were shown a singularly cut stone of large size. It is ten feet three inches long, five feet one inch wide, and four feet five inches high above the ground, in which it seems partly buried. We collected every where various wrought pieces of obsidian.
The larger pyramid is a little distant from the street to the east of it. As our time was limited I ascended it hastily, and found that, except in size it differs only in one respect from the other: about midway a terrace extends around it. The faces of both pyramids correspond with the four points of the compass. The view from them extends over the lake of Tescuco to the city of Mexico, and beyond the western barrier of the plain to the snow-capped mountain of Toluca.
The large pyramid of Teotihuacan is called Tonatiuh Ytzaqual, or House of the Sun. According to Oteyza's measurements6 its base is 208 metres—682½ English feet—its perpendicular height is 55 metres—180.4 feet. The base of the other pyramid is much less than that of the former. This is called Mextli Ytzaqual, or House of the Moon: its height is 144.4 feet.
6 Humb. T. 2. l. 3. c. 8. p. 66.
The construction of these pyramids is ascribed to the Tolteck nation, in which event they were built in the eighth or ninth century.7 It has been asserted that these and the other Mexican Pyramids are hollow; but as far as investigations have been carried, their solidity seems established. Constructed as they are, if they were hollow the destructive influence of so many centuries which have elapsed since their erection, would have discovered it. The supposition is equally ill-founded that they are mere casings or crusts to natural eminences. So far as rains have laid them open, or the hand of man exposed to view their interior, all is artificial. It is idle to argue that if they were completely artificial, the materials which form them must have been dug from some contiguous spot, and that this has no where been discovered. Places are seen from which the materials have been collected; and the circumjacent plain is strewed thickly with tetzontli, quite abundant enough to build other pyramids, without being reduced to the necessity of digging into the earth.