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 covered with a Toltec or Aztec calendar. The sculptures upon the rock have, however, been destroyed by the Indians, who cut through it as soon as they found the spot an object of interest to strangers. These simple and superstitious beings imagined that the quest of gold, alone, could induce travellers to leave the capital, cross the lake, and toil up to the summit of this elevation, and, accordingly they bored through the carved rock to obtain the buried treasure, until they have formed a hole in the mountain, which is now the hiding place and probably the home of a large number of squalid wretches. On the absolute top of the mountain no traces of an edifice are now observable; but as the Spaniards supposed it had been desecrated by Indian rites in the olden time, it has been sanctified by the erection of a cross, from whose feet the whole valley of Mexico, with its lakes, plains, towns and majestic panorama of encircling mountains, bursts on the sight of the wearied traveller. * * * * * Returning to the recess from the summit, and winding thence by a spiral path down the eastern slopes of the hill, we find the road suddenly ended by a wall which plunges precipitously down the mountain for about two hundred feet. At this termination of the pathway, cut in the solid rock, we found another recess, surrounded with seats, while, in the centre of the area, was a circular basin, a yard and a half in diameter, and three feet deep, into which water was formerly introduced, through the small aperture in the square pipe which is delineated in the engraving. [Illustration: ANCIENT RESERVOIR.]