measurement, are about four hundred feet in extent, on each of their fronts, along the base line. They are built partly of burned and partly of sun dried bricks, mixed up with fragments of pottery and thick coverings of cement, through which neat canals had been moulded to carry off the water from the upper terrace. Bernal Diaz del Castillo informs us, that the chief teocalli of Tezcoco was ascended by one hundred and seventeen steps; and, from the quantity of obsidian fragments, images, vessels and heads of idols we found upon the sides of these structures, it is not unlikely, that they, like the teocallis of the capital were devoted to the same bloody and impious rites. In some of the private houses of this town, many larger idols or images cut from basalt are still preserved, and in 1825, Mr. Poinsett saw at the residence of the commandant several of these figures, which were better formed and designed than most of the Indian statues he had previously encountered in his Mexican travels.
TESCOCINGO.
About three miles across the gently sloping levels which spread out east of the town of Tezcoco, a sharp, precipitous conical mountain rises abruptly from the plain, which is stripped of the forests that once probably clothed its sides, and is now only covered with a thick growth of nopals, bushes and aloes. From the quantity of Indian remains found on this elevation and in its vicinity, there is no doubt that it was the site of an Aztec palace, or was connected with the adjacent plain by some architectural works that have been destroyed in the centuries that have elapsed since the conquest. The traveller climbs this steep mountain with great labor, and finds nearly every part of it covered with the débris of ancient pottery and obsidian; and, in many parts of his ascent, he is aided by the remains of the spiral road, cut in the solid rock, which evidently once wound from its base to its top. Fifty feet below the summit, looking exactly north, the massive stone of the mountain has been cut into seats surrounding a recess leading to a steep wall which is said to have been