s to be concealed by the
vegetation which covers the sides of the pyramid." A great flight of
steps leads to the level summit, by the sides of which are smaller
nights. "The facing of the stones is decorated with hieroglyphics, in
which serpents and crocodiles carved in relievo are visible. Each story
contains a great number of square niches symmetrically distributed. In
the first story there are 24 on each side, in the second 20, and in the
third 16. There are 366 of these niches on the whole pyramid, and 12 in
the stairs toward the east."

The civilization of the Aztecs who built the old city of Mexico will be
made a separate topic; but it may be said here that when they came into
the Valley of Mexico they were much less advanced in civilization than
their predecessors. There is no reason whatever to doubt that they had
always resided in the country as an obscure branch of the aboriginal
people. Some have assumed, without much warrant, that they came to
Mexico from the North. Mr. Squier shows, with much probability, that
they came from the southern part of the country, where communities are
still found speaking the Aztec language. When they rose to supremacy
they adopted, so far as their condition allowed, the superior knowledge
of their predecessors, and continued, in a certain way, and with a lower
standard, the civilization of the Toltecs. It has been said, not without
reason, that the civilization found in Mexico by the Spanish conquerors
consisted, to a large extent, of "fragments from the wreck that befell
the American civilization of antiquity."

THE GREAT RUINS AT THE SOUTH.

To find the chief seats and most abundant remains of the most remarkable
civilization of this old American race, we must go still farther south
into Central America and some of the more southern states of Mexico.
Here ruins of many ancient cities have been discovered, cities which
must have been deserted and left to decay in ages previous to the
beginning of the Aztec supremacy. Most of these ruins were found buried
in dense forests, where, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, they had
been long hidden from observation.

The ruins known as Palenque, for instance, seem to have been entirely
unknown to both natives and Spaniards until about the year 1750. Cortez
and some of his companions went through the open region near the forest
in which these ruins are situated without hearing of them or suspecting
their existence. The great ruin