Of the great pyramid or teocalli of Huitzilopotchtli in old Mexico, no vestige now remains, unless such as is reputed to lie buried under the foundations of the cathedral which occupies its site. But time and fate have dealt more tenderly with the scarcely less famous pyramid of Cholula. The ancient city of that name, when first seen by Cortes, was said to include, within and without its walls, about forty thousand houses, or according to ordinary rules of computation, two hundred thousand inhabitants. But whatever its ancient population may have been, while the fruits of Spanish conquest have advanced it to the rank of capital of the republic of Cholula, they have left only sixteen thousand as the number of its occupants. Still, Cholula was unquestionably one of the most famous of the cities of the New World: a sacred Mecca for the pilgrims of Anahuac. Quetzalcoatl, the milder god of the Aztec pantheon, whose worship was performed by offerings of fruits and flowers in their season, was venerated as the divine teacher of the arts of peace. His reign on earth was the golden age of Anahuac, when its people learned from him agriculture, metallurgy, and the art of government. But their benefactor, according to the tradition handed down to the Aztecs by an elder people whom they had superseded, incurred the wrath of another of the gods. As he passed on his way to abandon the land to the rule of the terrible Huitzilopotchtli, he paused at the city of Cholula; and while he tarried there, the great teocalli was reared and dedicated to his worship. But the benevolent deity could not remain within reach of the avenger. After spending twenty years among them, teaching the people the arts of civilisation, he proceeded onward till he reached the ocean; and there embarking in a vessel, made of serpents’ skins, his followers watched his retreating bark on its way to the sacred isle of Tlapallan. But the tradition lived on among the Mexicans that the bark of the good deity would revisit their shores; and this fondly cherished belief materially contributed to the success of the Spaniards, when their huge-winged ships bore the beings of another world to the mainland of the Mexican Gulf. The legend bears all the marks of anciently derived hero-worship, in which love for a lost benefactor framed for itself a deified embodiment of his virtues. This, however, is important to note, that Aztec traditions assigned the pyramid of Cholula to an older race and era than their own. It was there when they entered the plateau; and the arts of the divine metallurgist were taught, not to them but to the Toltecs, whom they superseded. Nevertheless, the deity shared in their worship; his image occupied a shrine on the summit of the pyramid of Cholula when the Spaniards first visited the holy city; and the undying flame flung its radiance far into the night, to keep alive the memory of the good deity, who was one day to return and restore the golden age.