What are called the finest ruins in Mexico are those of Xochicalco, seventy-five miles southwest of the capital, consisting of a mound of five terraces supported by masonry, with a walled area on the summit. Of late years a cornfield surrounds what is left of the pyramidal structure, which was its crowning edifice, and which up to the middle of the last century had five receding stories, though only one now appears. It owes its destruction to the needs which the proprietors of the neighboring sugar-works have had for its stones. The earliest account of the ruins appeared in the “Descripcion (1791) de los antiqüedades de Xochicalco” of José Antonio Alzate y Ramirez, in the _Gacetas de Literatura_ (Mexico, 1790-94, in 3 vols.; reprinted Puebla, 1831, in 4 vols.), accompanied by plates, which were again used in Pietro Marquez’s _Due Antichi Monumenti de Architettura Messicana_ (Roma, 1804),[1013] with an Italian version of Alzate, from which the French translation in Dupaix was made. Alzate furnished the basis of the account in Humboldt’s _Vues_ (i. 129; pl. ix. of folio ed.), and Waldeck (_Voyage pitt._, 69) regrets that Humboldt adopted so inexact a description as that of Alzate. From Nebel (_Viage pintoresco_) we get our best graphic representations, for Tylor (_Anahuac_) says that Casteñeda’s drawings, accompanying Dupaix, are very incorrect. Bancroft says that one, at least, of these drawings in Kingsborough bears not the slightest resemblance to the one given in Dupaix. In 1835 there were explorations made under orders of the Mexican government, which were published in the _Revista Mexicana_ (i. 539,—reprinted in the _Diccionario Universal_, x. 938). Other accounts, more or less helpful, are given by Latrobe, Mayer,[1014] and in Isador Löwenstern’s _Le Méxique_ (Paris, 1843).[1015] [Illustration: COURT IN THE MEXICO MUSEUM. NOTE.—The opposite view of the court of the Museum is from Charnay, p. 57. He says: “The Museum cannot be called rich, in so far that there is nothing remarkable in what the visitor is allowed to see.” The vases, which had so much deceived Charnay, earlier, as to cause him to make casts of them for the Paris Museum, he at a later day pronounced forgeries; and he says that they, with many others which are seen in public and private museums, were manufactured at Tlatiloco, a Mexican suburb, between 1820 and 1828. See Holmes on the trade in Mexican spurious relics in _Science_, 1886. The reclining statue in the foreground is balanced by one similar to it at an opposite part of the court-yard. One is the Chac-mool, as Le Plongeon called it, unearthed by him at Chichen-Itza, and appropriated by the Mexican government; the other was discovered at Tlaxcala. The round stone in the centre is the sacrificial stone dug up in the great square in Mexico, of which an enlarged view is given on another page.