njoying the most
delicate tropical fruits, which I plucked fresh from the trees;
yesterday I was traversing a salt desert covered with clouds of
drifting sand; and I was now among grain-farms of a cold climate.

PYRAMID OF CHOLULA.

Right before me, as I rode along, was a mass of trees, of ever-green
foliage, presenting indistinctly the outline of a pyramid, which ran up
to the height of about two hundred feet, and was crowned by an old
stone church, and surmounted by a tall steeple. It was the most
attractive object in the plain; it had such a look of uncultivated
nature in the midst of grain-fields. It would have lost half its
attractiveness had it been the stiff and clumsy thing which the
pictures represent it to be. I had admired it in pictures from my
childhood for what it was not; but I now admired it for what it really
was--the finest Indian mound on this continent; where the Indians
buried the bravest of their braves, with bows and arrows, and a
drinking cup, that they might not be unprovided for when they should
arrive at the hunting-grounds of the Great Spirit. A little digging, a
few years ago,[11] has furnished the evidence on which I base this
assertion. This digging has destroyed the old monkish fiction to
reinstate the truly Indian idea of the dead, and of the necessity of
mounds for their burial.

By going round to the north side, I obtained a fine view of the modern
improvements which have been constructed upon this Indian mound. I rode
up a paved carriage-way into the church-yard that now occupies the top,
and giving my horse to a squalid Indian imp who came out of the vestry,
I went in and took a survey of the tawdry images through which God is
now worshiped by the baptized descendants of the builders of this
mound. My curiosity was soon gratified, and I returned to my place in
the saddle.

[Illustration: PYRAMID OF CHOLULA.]

I followed the wall around the church-yard, stopping from point to
point to look upon the vast map spread around on every side. Orizaba,
which I first saw when 150 miles out at sea as a mammoth sugar-loaf
sitting upon a cloud, had at Jalapa, and at "the eye of waters,"
different forms, while here it appeared to be joined with the Perote,
forming the limit of the horizon toward the east. On the west were
Popocatapetl, Iztaccihuatl, and Malinche; while smaller mountains and
hills seemed to complete the line of circumvallation, which gave to the
elevated plain of Puebla th