In spite of a late evening spent in very pleasant society, we were up early next morning, ready for an excursion to the Pyramids of Teotihuacán, some sixteen miles off, or so, under the guidance of one of Mr. Bowring’s men.
The road lies through the plain, between great plantations of magueys, for this is the most renowned district in the Republic for the size of its aloes, and the quality of the pulque that is made from them.
We stopped sometimes to examine a particularly large specimen, which might measure 30 feet round, and to see the juice, which had collected in the night, drawn out of the great hollow that had been cut to receive it, in the heart of the plant.
The Indians have a great fancy for making crosses, and the aloe lends itself particularly to this kind of decoration.
They have only to cut off six or eight inches of one leaf, and impale the piece on the sharp point of another, and the cross is made.
Every good-sized aloe has two or three of these primitive religious emblems upon it.
Several little torrent-beds crossed the road, and over them were thrown old-fashioned Spanish stone bridges, as steep as the Rialto, or the bridge on the willow-patterned plates.
Before going to see the pyramids, we visited the caves in the hill-side not far from them, whence the stone was brought to build them. It is tetzontli, the porous amygdaloid which abounds among the porphyritic hills, a beautiful building-stone, easily worked, and durable. There was a large space that seemed to have been quarried out bodily, and into this opened numerous caves. We left our horses at the entrance, and spent an hour or two in hunting the place over. The ground was covered with pieces