red pottery. In
that valley, and thence to Mexico, fragments of earthen ware are very
common; and in the mounds entire vessels are not unfrequently found.
Upon reaching Mexico, the mounds are seen to be still further improved
in size and form, and specimens of ancient pottery are more abundant.
The great mound or pyramid at Cholula, which is a fair type of the
mounds in Mexico, is fourteen hundred and twenty-three feet square at
the base, and one hundred and seventy-seven feet high, being larger than
the celebrated pyramids of Egypt. This immense structure is said to have
been built by the Toltecs, a people who, according to tradition, as
communicated to the Spaniards, entered Mexico from the North in the year
A.D. 648, and established their capital on the northern confines of the
great valley of Mexico, at Tula, the remains of which city were visible,
and a record made of them, at the time of the Conquest by Cortes.

This people were said to have possessed a good knowledge of agriculture,
and were well instructed in many useful mechanic arts. They mixed gold
and copper, and were experts in working these metals. For a period of
four hundred years they occupied the territory of Mexico or Anahuac; but
secession, and the attendant evils of war, pestilence, and famine,
greatly reduced their numbers, and the race disappeared from the land to
give place to their successors, the Aztecs, who also emigrated from the
North. Remnants of the Toltec race are said to have migrated still
farther south, and to have spread over Central America; and the
remarkable correspondence of dates inclines us to the belief that the
famous Manco Capac, whom the Peruvians worshipped as the founder of
their empire, may have been a wanderer from that once happy, but then
unfortunate people. The useful arts, which he made known to the
semi-barbarous people among whom he settled, instead of originating in
the great luminary of the day, and being brought to earth by a "child of
the Sun," as they were taught, are far more likely to have been
cultivated by the Toltecs in the days of their prosperity, and, on the
dissolution of their government, transmitted by those who, fearing the
result, had fled and taken refuge with the credulous Peruvians. Whether
the stupendous ruins of temples found at Mitla, Palenque, and Uxmal were
the work of the Toltecs or the Aztecs, is immaterial. It is sufficient
for the purposes of this paper to show that a people inhabited M