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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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ments, also some animal remains, viz., some ribs (probably of the roebuck, though on this point I will not be positive, not being a zoologist), some small scapulas, two teeth, and, stranger still, two enormous humeruses, much larger than the humerus of the ox; both of these bones are broken longitudinally, as though to take out the marrow. We found also the radius of an animal considerably larger than a horse. Whence these bones? It is generally agreed that previous to the conquest there were neither oxen nor horses in America.

August 19th.-A good deal of work to-day, with poor results. We have now twenty men, and in a day or two we shall have completed our researches at this spot. I can not yet comprehend the architecture of our friends the Toltecs. I am fairly puzzled; it may be that this habitation is the most complicated of them all. Our finds comprise only bones of the same species as those found yesterday. In going about among the ruins I came across two stones, one of them cut in the form of a vase with a cross on one side; the other flat, with a double cross (†), and certain ornamental figures. I also found a small cross of terra-cotta.

August 20th.-Work still goes on at the Toltec house. Our finds comprise some curious fragments-a mold, a stamp, a flint ornament, and a number of obsidian arrow-heads and knives. I am beginning to understand the distribution of the apartments in this building. We shall eventually comprehend the entire plan. I detailed a party of five men to dig at the site of a small temple or oratorio, but no result has yet been obtained.

In another edifice there were found some bones, among them a gigantic tibia of a ruminant, with the perinæum attached. Could this animal have been a bison ?

August 21st.-To-day I set a force of laborers at work on a small mound supposed to contain an oratorio. But we found only a very plain platter and several pieces of cut stone. It seems evident that, tradition to the contrary notwithstanding, the buildings must have been overturned, for not a wall of the oratorio was standing.

While watching my men, I measured the pyramids. The first measures nearly one hundred and ninety-six feet on each front at the base, and it is forty-six feet in height above the esplanade on which it stands. The second, which lies north of the first, is only one hundred and thirty-one feet wide and thirty-six feet high above the esplanade.

VOL. CXXXI.-NO. 289.

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We found again to-day bones of large ruminants—a radius thirteen inches long and 3-7 inches in diameter, and teeth from 1-5 to 1.8 inch in length. Here are the remains of unknown animals, probably of mammoth bisons, domesticated by the Toltecs, at least used by them for food. This is in contradiction of history, which affirms that the Indians had no large domestic animals. Now, would a people, after once domesticating an animal, suffer the race to die out?

But the most remarkable find of all is certain pieces of coarse delf with a blue figure on white ground, and again, pieces of fine porcelain with the same figure and the same ground. Here is a discovery that revolutionizes our notions of ancient America. No one had ever before heard of delf or of porcelain existing among the Indians of America. Did the Toltecs manufacture such wares? Or were these relics brought by them from their original home in Asia?

At another point where I had four men at work we found the remains of a human body, but the skull alone was in a condition to be added to my collection.

August 23d.-To-day we made a cast of a great bas-relief sculptured on the face of a rock near the village. I expect to complete the excavations to-morrow; we will then sketch the plan, and will endeavor to explain all the details.

August 24th.-We are continually meeting with enigmas amid these ruins. To-day I discovered a sheep's head in terra-cotta! I also found the other extremity of the mammoth humerus before mentioned, and several other bones which I could not identify.

In writing of Teotihuacan I mentioned my having found, among certain little masks of terra-cotta, figures of negroes, of Chinese, and of Japanese. I also spoke of a figure resembling the Venus of Milo; and now I find at Tula a mold, of which I have made a cast in stearine, which shows a European figure with the hair arranged in modern style and crowned with a braid of false hair! In some of the private collections here I have noticed all sorts of types, and I have some myself which are simply extraordinary.

August 25th.-We sometimes go far abroad in search of an explanation that stares us in the face at home. I have just met in the plaza the perfect type of the head with braided hair which yesterday I compared with the European type. Indeed, we find all types blended in Mexico. I have often seen Indians of pure blood with blue eyes.

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