It was a delightful afternoon when I mounted my horse for a ride to Cholula. The wind of the day before had driven away every vapor from this exceedingly transparent atmosphere, excepting only the cloud that was resting upon Popocatapetl, a little below its snow-covered summit. It was such weather as we have at "harvest home," and it was truly a "harvest home" throughout the whole Vega. Men were working in gangs in the different fields, gathering stalks, or husking corn, or cutting grain, or plowing with a dozen plows in company, or harrowing, or putting in seed. It was harvest-time and seed-time together. The full green blade and the ripened grain stood in adjoining fields in this region of perpetual sunshine. As I rode along between carefully cultivated estates, I did not fail to catch the enthusiasm which groups of cheerful field-laborers always inspire in one whose happiest recollections run back to the labors of the farm. Such are the varieties this country affords: three days ago I was enjoying the most delicate tropical fruits, which I plucked fresh from the trees; yesterday I was traversing a salt desert covered with clouds of drifting sand; and I was now among grain-farms of a cold climate. PYRAMID OF CHOLULA. Right before me, as I rode along, was a mass of trees, of ever-green foliage, presenting indistinctly the outline of a pyramid, which ran up to the height of about two hundred feet, and was crowned by an old stone church, and surmounted by a tall steeple. It was the most attractive object in the plain; it had such a look of uncultivated nature in the midst of grain-fields. It would have lost half its attractiveness had it been the stiff and clumsy thing which the pictures represent it to be. I had admired it in pictures from my childhood for what it was not; but I now admired it for what it really was--the finest Indian mound on this continent; where the Indians buried the bravest of their braves, with bows and arrows, and a drinking cup, that they might not be unprovided for when they should arrive at the hunting-grounds of the Great Spirit. A little digging, a few years ago,[11] has furnished the evidence on which I base this assertion. This digging has destroyed the old monkish fiction to reinstate the truly Indian idea of the dead, and of the necessity of mounds for their burial. By going round to the north side, I obtained a fine view of the modern improvements which have been constructed upon this Indian mound. I rode up a paved carriage-way into the church-yard that now occupies the top, and giving my horse to a squalid Indian imp who came out of the vestry, I went in and took a survey of the tawdry images through which God is now worshiped by the baptized descendants of the builders of this mound. My curiosity was soon gratified, and I returned to my place in the saddle. [Illustration: PYRAMID OF CHOLULA.]