called Tonatiuh
Ytzalqual, or the House of the Sun, has a base of two hundred and eight
metres, or six hundred and eighty-two English feet in length, and
fifty-five metres or one hundred and eighty feet perpendicular
elevation; being three feet higher than the great pyramid of Cholula.
The other, called Meztu Ytzaqual, or House of the Moon, is thirty-six
feet lower, and has a lesser base. These monuments, according to the
first accounts, were erected by the most ancient tribes, and were the
models of the Aztec Teocalli. The faces of these pyramids are within
fifty-two seconds, exactly north and south and east and west. Their
interior consists of massive clay and stone. This solid nucleus is
covered by a kind of porous amygdaloid, called tetzontli. They are
ascended by steps of hewn stone to their pinnacles, where tradition
affirms, there were anciently statues covered with thin lamina of gold.
And it was on these sublime heights, with the clear tropical skies of
Mexico above them, that the Toltec magi lit the sacred fire upon their
altars, offered up incense, and chanted hymns.

One fact in connexion with these ancient structures is remarkable, on
account of its illustrative character of the use of our small mounds.
Around the base of these pyramids, there were found numerous smaller
pyramids, or cones of scarcely nine or ten metres--twenty-nine to
thirty feet elevation, which were dedicated to the STARS. These minor
elevations, were generally arranged at right angles. They furnished
also places of sepulture for their distinguished chiefs, and hence the
avenue leading through them, was called Micoatl, or Road of the Dead.
We have in this arrangement a hint of the object of the numerous small
mounds, which generally surround the large mounds in the Mississippi
valley--as may be witnessed in the remarkable group of La Trappe, in
Illinois. A similar arrangement, indeed, prevails in the smaller series
of the leading mound groups west of the Alleghanies. They may be called
Star-mounds. If this theory be correct, we have not only a satisfactory
explanation of the object of the smaller groups, which has heretofore
puzzled inquirers; but the presence of such groups may be taken as an
evidence of the wide spread worship of the Sun, at an early period in
these latitudes.

Sun-worship existed extensively in North America as well as South.
There is reason to believe that the ancestors of all the principal
existing tribes in Ameri