Half a league below the town of Huatusco, Dupaix discovered a remarkable pyramid crowning a hill on a slope of which was also a group of ruins called the Pueblo Viejo. This structure known as El Castillo, measures sixty-six feet in height, though there is some uncertainty as to the size of the base.[529] Dupaix’s text states it to be two hundred and twenty-one feet square, but Mr. Bancroft calls attention to the fact that Castañeda’s drawing makes it about seventy-five feet square. The pyramid in three terraces measures thirty-seven feet high. The superstructure is in three stories, with a single doorway in the lowest. This seems to have been the only opening through the walls of the castle, which were eight feet thick; we presume, however, only at their base, as their exterior shows a sloping rather than a perpendicular surface. The lowest story forms a single apartment with three pillars in the centre supporting the beams of the floor above. Portions of the beams were visible when Dupaix visited the locality. The walls of the castle are of rubble made of stone and mortar, as in the Yucatan structures, having stone facings. The exterior of the castle proper was coated with polished plaster and ornamented with panels containing regular rows of round stones embedded in the coating. Some unimportant fragments of sculpture in stone and terra-cotta were found in the ruin. El Castillo is of special interest because of the well-preserved condition of its superstructure. About one hundred and fifty or sixty miles north-west of the city of Vera Cruz, the German artist Nebel found a group of ruins known as those of _Tusapan_, buried in a dense forest at the foot of the Cordillera. The only structure which remains standing closely resembles the pyramid above described, except that the walls of the pyramid are not terraced, and the tower surmounting the pyramid is built with a single story. The only opening in the tower is the doorway at the head of the stairway. The interior contains a single apartment twelve feet square. The ceiling is said to have been arched or pointed, but Herr Nebel has failed to furnish definite information as to whether the arch was of overlapping stones or not, an oversight of an unpardonable character, since it would be of greatest interest to know whether the Maya arch existed so far north. The pyramid is described as thirty feet square, and built of irregular blocks of limestone, which was probably covered with a coat of the plastering generally employed and so polished in its appearance.[530] One remaining structure in the State of Vera Cruz merits special attention, namely, the pyramid of Papantla. This pyramid, known as El Tajin, “the thunderbolt,” is situated in a dense forest near the modern town of Papantla, which lies about forty miles east of Tusapan. There is a wide divergence of expression as to the dimensions of the pyramid. Herr Nebel, however, makes the base something over ninety