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THE RUINS OF CENTRAL AMERICA.

PART IV.

OUR next field of labor was Tula, the ancient metropolis of the Toltecs, now a village of fifteen hundred inhabitants, situate about sixty-five miles to the north of the city of Mexico. We traveled by rail to Huehuetoca, and thence by diligence over execrable roads to our destination, some twenty-five miles from the latter place. I will here briefly recount the history of Tula as written by Clavigero, the only one of the Spanish historians of Mexico who possessed the critical faculty.

The Toltecs came from the north, bringing Asiatic traditions, and settled first at Tollantzinco, there tarrying only twenty years, and then definitively establishing themselves at Tollan or Tula, in the year 667. The Toltec empire lasted three hundred and eightyfour years, or till 1051. Here we are, therefore, in the capital of the most famous nation of Anahuac. A gentle race were the Toltecs, preferring the arts to war, and the nations that came later owed to them the culture of cotton, of maize, and of the different fruits grown on the high plateaus; from them they learned the art of metallurgy and of cutting precious stones. Wherever we go we find memorials of them: to them is attributed the construction of the pyramids of Teotihuacan and of Cholula.

This interesting civilization perished as though by an earthquake a series of calamities effaced the work of almost four centuries. First came a drought of several years' duration; this was followed by a famine, and then came pestilence. A feeble remnant of the population only survived, and with these the chief Quetzalcoatl resolved to go in search of some more hospitable region. Leaving Cholula they journeyed southward along the shore of the Gulf and the coast of the Pacific, and settled in Yucatan, where we shall find them later.

What now remains to indicate the site of their ancient capital, Tula? A hill about one mile long by half a mile broad, covered with mounds, plateaus, and ruins of all kinds.

Some of the inhabitants of Tula have made collections of the antiquities of the place. Among these I would particularize a carved pearl shell representing a Toltec chief seated. This figure exactly corresponds with one of the figures of warriors among the bas-reliefs of Chichen-Itza, as reproduced by Stephens.

On the face of a rock just south of Tula are sculptured two figures of warriors which, in their head-gear, their ornaments, and their attitude, are identical with the warriors of Chichen-Itza. A stone ring to be seen in one of the strects is carved precisely like the ring at Chichen. In the plaza is the shaft of a column in two pieces, which were held together by tenon and mortice. The column was sculptured and covered with curved lines and palms. There are also in the plaza three caryatides of very hard basalt, each two metres eighteen centimetres in height. The upper half of these figures is wanting. Though rudely executed, they are not without artistic merit.

We began our excavations here on the 16th of August with a force of four men and two boys. The results of each successive day's work I will state as they are recorded in my journal.

On the first day the objects of use or ornament found by us were not of much importance, and none of them were perfect. Nevertheless, I consider myself singularly fortunate in having discovered a Toltec house answering to the description given to us by Torquemada in his account of Teotihuacan. As yet I can affirm nothing; still, from the remains brought to light, I can conjecture what kind of habitation it must have been. I set the men to work at one of the many mounds upon the ridge, and soon found that I had hit upon a group of habitations; further, as luck would have it, the progress of the work brought us to the portal of the habitation.

When writing about Teotihuacan I said that all the dwellings of the upper class of the population were united together in groups, and erected in isolated mounds, one in the middle, the others round about, the whole forming a sort of honeycomb with its cells placed at different elevations. Well, the Toltec habitation here at Tula was organized in the same way.

I am not in the least surprised at the fewness of the objects found, for it must be remembered that the Toltecs did not quit their country at the close of a war, or after a conquest, but in conse

quence of a long series of misfortunes, and that they had time for collecting their portable goods-arms, utensils, ornaments. They left behind them only such of their goods as they could not carry away-their stone idols and the remains of their ancestors. It was an emigration in the strict sense of the term, and hence we find nothing of value, no objects that were in daily use, except frag

ments.

But we have seen the Indian in his inner life through the relics found at Tenenepanco and at Apatlatepitonco; we are now studying him in his dwellings we shall complete our study by viewing his public life, into which we shall be initiated by an examination of his temples and his palaces. In short, we shall pass from the phalanstery to the citadel and the temple.

Among the objects found are thick red bricks of coarse clay; this is all the more curious because hitherto we have nowhere seen baked bricks employed. The outside of every wall is of stones of every kind-tetzontli, bowlders, fragments of basalt mixed with clay, with casings of different sorts, some of stone cut in the shape of bricks, the whole covered with a thick layer of lime or white stucco. The floor is covered with cement two inches in thickness, very hard, and painted red. In sundry places where we have dug we have found this layer of cement, which the builders employed not only for the floor of the houses and the pavements of the courts, but also for the streets of their cities and the highways. All this reminds us of Teotihuacan, and of the great road leading from Tihoo to Cozumel at the time of the conquest.

We find also great masses of baked clay, the original form of which it is difficult to conjecture. But the most singular thing found is some charcoal incased in baked clay. What could have been the use for this we are at a loss to determine.

August 17th.-I have found out the use of the bricks. These bricks, which are very hard, are from ten to twelve inches long by from five to five and a half inches wide and one to two inches in thickness. They were used for the steps of the stairways, and were there covered with a coat of cement; they were also used in the pilasters, of which we have discovered three, and in some walls.

Usually each people, according to its origin, build of bricks, of stones, or of wood; of clay mixed with stones; or of sun-dried bricks. But here at Tula we are face to face with an eclectic people, and this is not the least interesting circumstance connected with them. To judge from the great dwelling, or group of dwell

ings, now being explored, the Toltecs employed all these materials simultaneously. They used clay and mud for the inside of the walls; cement to coat them, cement also for their roads and for their floors; dressed stone and brick for casings; brick and stone for stairways; brick for pilasters; and wood for roofing the edifice. I find every reason for inferring that the houses had flat roofs consisting of timbers coated with cement. Of such timbers we find vast quantities. The Toltec roof was the azotea of the present day. Hence the builders of Tula differed in many points from the people of Palenque and of Yucatan, who built entirely of stone and mortar. But that does not in the least go to prove that the civilization of the more southern peoples was not derived from the more northern. We have had ten men at work to-day; to-morrow

we shall have fifteen, and thereafter twenty.

August 18th. So far we have discovered twelve chambers. Among the objects found to-day are two fragments of cut stone, one representing an animal, the other being an architectural ornament that is very common in Yucatan; then, there are several pieces of baked clay, ranging from the coarsest sort of brick to the finest glazed pottery. Among these fragments are some which must have belonged to enormous vases.

As I have said, the Toltecs were eclectic. Not only did they employ all sorts of materials in their buildings-clay, stone, bricks, and timber-they were eclectic also in their architecture, which as yet is quite incomprehensible to me. The apartments that have been brought to light comprise a number of chambers, big and little, placed at different heights. We shall have no clear idea of the relation of these different chambers to one another, or of the mode of access to them through the labyrinthine passages and the numerous stairways, until the whole edifice has been unearthed.

There is a very wide difference indeed between the arrangement of the chambers and the whole architecture here and the simple architecture of the palaces and other edifices of Yucatan. But the ornamentation is in many instances the same in both; as for the facial types, the vesture, and the head-gear of the warriors, they are absolutely identical; and the difference of race will account for any dissimilarities.

Among our finds I must not fail to mention sundry fragments of the casing of the inner walls, all covered with figures, either in white or in red on a black ground. I have had them photographed ; they show great variety of composition. We collected a few orna

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