What a fortunate man was Mr. Jorullo! Old Cheops, king of Egypt, spent vast sums of money, many long years, and the labour of myriads of his subjects, in erecting the Great Pyramid as a monument to his memory. But Mr. Jorullo, without his having to lay down a single Mexican dollar, and without any labour, either of his own or of his servants, had a magnificent monument raised to his memory in a single night. Jorullo's monument, too, is far bigger than the pyramid of Cheops--being nearly four times the height, and occupying a much larger extent of ground. Whether it will last as long as the pyramid has done, time only can show. You would doubtless like to know how this great monument was reared. Here is the story:--Don Pedro di Jorullo was a Mexican gentleman who lived about the middle of the last century. He was a landed proprietor--the owner of a nice little farm of great fertility, situated to the westward of the city of Mexico, and about ninety miles from the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The ground was well watered by artificial means, and produced abundant crops of indigo and sugar-cane. Thus Mr. Jorullo was a very thriving well-to-do sort of man. [Illustration: Jorullo] This gentleman's prosperity continued without interruption till the month of June 1759, when, to the great alarm of his servants dwelling on the estate, strange underground rumblings were heard, accompanied by frequent shakings of the ground. These continued for nearly two months; but at the end of that time all became quiet again, and Mr. Jorullo's servants slept in fancied security. On the night of the 28th of September, however, their slumbers were suddenly broken by a return of the horrible underground rumblings--thundering more loudly than before. The next night, these subterranean thunders became so loud, that the Indian servants started from their beds, and fled in terror to the mountains in the neighbourhood. Gazing thence, after day had dawned, they beheld to their astonishment that a tract of ground from three to four square miles in extent, with their master's farm in the middle of it, had been upheaved in the shape of an inflated bladder. At the edges this singular elevation rises only about thirty-nine feet above the old level of the plain; but so great is the general convexity of the mound, that towards the centre it swells up to five hundred and twenty-four feet above the original level.