These people were highly civilized. Cempoalla, their capital city, was situate about five miles from the sea, at the junction of two streams. Its houses were of brick and mortar, and each was surrounded by a small garden, at the foot of which a stream of fresh water was conducted. Fruit trees and grain fields filled the gardens and surrounded the city. Altogether, says the chronicler, it was like a terrestrial paradise.[168] That this description is not overdrawn, is proved by the remarkable ruins which still exist in this province, and the abundant relics of ancient art which have been collected there, especially by the efforts of Mr. Hermann Strebel, whose collections now form part of the Berlin Ethnographic Museum.[169] The affinities of the Totonacos are difficult to make out. Sahagun says that they claimed kinship with the Huastecs, their neighbors to the north, which would bring them into the Maya stock. Their language has, in fact, many words from Maya roots, but it has also many more from the Nahuatl, and its grammar is more in accord with the latter than with the former.[170] Besides these, there is a residuum which is different from both. For this reason I class them as an independent stock, of undetermined connections. 5. THE ZAPOTECS AND MIXTECS. The greater part of Oaxaca and the neighboring regions are still occupied by the Zapotecs, who call themselves _Didja-Za_.[171] There are now about 265,000 of them, about fifty thousand of whom speak nothing but their native tongue. In ancient times they constituted a powerful independent state, the citizens of which seem to have been quite as highly civilized as any member of the Aztecan family. They were agricultural and sedentary, living in villages and constructing buildings of stone and mortar. The most remarkable, but by no means the only specimens of these still remaining are the ruins of Mitla, called by the natives _Ryo Ba_, the “entrance to the sepulchre,” the traditional belief being that these imposing monuments are sepulchres of their ancestors.[172] These ruins consist of thirty-nine houses, some of adobe, but most of stone, and two artificial hills. The stone houses have thick walls of rough stone and mortar, faced with polished blocks arranged in a variety of symmetrical patterns, such as are called grecques. Sometimes these patterns are repeated on the inner walls, but more frequently these were plastered with a hard white coat and painted an Indian red, with numerous figures. These delineations are on a par with those from the valley of Mexico and the ancient cities of Yucatan, and reveal much the same technique. One of the rooms is called the “hall of the columns,” from six round monolithic columns nearly ten feet in height, which were intended to support a roof of heavy stone slabs.