, now fast returning to its native dust. There are other
extremely interesting ruins here, notably a portion of a prehistoric
column, and the lower half of a very large statue situated in the plaza.
Mr. Ruskin said in his pedantic way that he could not be induced to
travel in America because there were no ruins. There _are_ ruins here
and in Yucatan which antedate by centuries anything of recorded history
relating to the British Isles. Across the Tula River and up the Cerro
del Tesoro are some other ancient ruins which have greatly interested
antiquarians, embracing carved stones and what must once have been part
of a group of dwellings, built of stone laid in mud and covered with
cement. The valley shows a rich array of foliage and flowers, forming
bits of delightful scenery. There are some fifteen hundred inhabitants
in Tula; but it must once have been a large city; indeed, the name
indicates that, meaning "the place of many people." The locality of the
ancient capital is now mostly overgrown and hidden from sight. We are
fifty miles from the city of Mexico at Tula, and about seven hundred
feet below it. The records of the Spanish conquest tell us that the
natives of this ancient capital were among the first, as a whole
community, to embrace the Christian religion; and it seems that its
people ever remained stanch allies of Cortez in extending his conquests.

Here we experienced one of those freaks of tropical weather, a furious
summer hail-storm. The thermometer had ranged about 80 deg. in the early
day, when suddenly heavy clouds seemed to gather from several points of
the sky at the same time. The thermometer dropped quickly some 30 deg.. It
was a couple of hours past noon when the clouds began to empty their
contents upon the earth; down came the hailstones like buckshot, only
twice as large, covering as with a white sheet the parched ground, which
had not been wet by a drop of rain for months. This unusual storm
prevailed for nearly an hour before it exhausted its angry force.
"Exceptional?" repeated the station-master on the line of the Mexican
Central Railroad, in reply to a query as to the weather. "I have been
here ten years, and this is the first time I have seen snow or hail at
any season. I should rather say it was exceptional." By and by, after
stampeding all the exposed cattle, and driving everybody to the nearest
shelter and keeping them there, the inky clouds dispersed almost as
suddenly as they had gat