If I hadn't been simply done up by the heat I would have been most interested in going over the collection, for the endless terra-cotta heads and masks, with entirely different features, mark the different races who have inhabited the plateau. My friend Humboldt, with whom I spent the evening, also the early night hours, and who had done the same thing just a hundred years ago, says the teocalli were _orientés_ as exactly as the Egyptian and Asiatic pyramids, and that the race the Spaniards found there attributed them to a still more ancient race, which would place them in the eighth or ninth century. They are composed of clay mixed with gravel, and covered with a wall of amygdaloid. What seems to be a system of pyramids is disposed in very large streets, following exactly the meridians, and which end at the four faces of the two great pyramids. After an hour in the museum, which seemed _quite_ an hour, I must say, there was a welcome announcement of lunch, and we walked along a path called "Camino de Muertos,"[38] "walk of the _half_-dead," one of the exhausted foreigners called it, and descended into the cool dimness of a great and beautiful grotto, where long tables, flower-decorated and elaborately spread, awaited us. The _Corps Diplomatique_ sat at the President's table; Von Hintze was between Baroness Riedl and myself, and an unidentified Mexican official or member of the dynasty was on my other side. The lunch was sent out from town by Sylvain and was most excellent. We could look out at a great patch of blue sky, and fringing the brilliant edges of the grotto were various cacti and rows of peaked hats and a single graceful pepper-tree. The Indians always spring up, as if by magic, from any place where there is a gathering. N. and Riedl, instead of taking seats at the President's table, sat at a small table back of us, and we knew from their unseemly mirth that they weren't talking about the antiquities or improving their minds in any way. After luncheon we all repaired to the Pyramid of the Moon, which nobody had the energy to ascend, going over a sidewalk made of ancient cement still bearing traces of red color. One of the smaller mounds had been opened by Señor Batres a few years before, and he found around and over it a building now called the "House of the Priests." At this special place even the most enterprising of the foreigners began to wilt, and some polychrome frescoes are the last definite impression I received before we started back to the buckboards. The ---- minister, sitting too near the wheel, to politely make room, got jolted out, but we picked him up and soothed him by singing his national anthem as we went toward the train. It was a long day, but one to be kept in memory with its background of obsidian, red clay masks, idols of jade, and works of a past race against which Mexican history continues to unfold itself. _February 29th._