afterward verified the same by comparison with the great image found at Mexico, not without strong suspicions that both were counterfeits; for in this country even the most sacred records are open to suspicion. Popular tradition and the most approved authors will have it, that some stray white man had found his way among the Mexicans, and taught them empirically the calculations and divisions of time, and a very few of the arts of civilized life unknown to our Indians, and they venerated him as a god. But the probabilities are that the whole story is a myth, and for once the Inquisition was right in suppressing speculation in relation to him, whether he was Saint Thomas or not.
At the base of this pyramid, three hundred years ago, flourished the rich and opulent city of Cholula, which, according to Cortéz, contained 40,000 houses. He says that he counted from this spot 400 mosques, and 400 towers of other mosques—that the "exterior of this city is more beautiful than any in Spain." That is, as he and all other historians of the Conquest agree in representing it, it was at the same time not only the Mecca and the commercial centre, but the centre of learning and refinement of Mexico. Here Indian philosophers met upon a common footing with Indian merchants. Its government, too, was republican; and upon these very plains, three hundred years ago and more, flourished two powerful republics, Tlascala and Cholula. The first was the Lacedæmon, the second the Athens of the Indian world, and when united they had successfully resisted the armies of Montezuma and his Aztecs. But Aztec intrigue was too powerful for the American Athens, and the polished city of Cholula having been subdued by the same arts by which Philip of Macedon had won the sovereignty of Athens—a combination of intrigue and of arms—Tlascala was left alone to resist the whole force of the Aztec empire, now aided by the faithless Cholulans.