to their boulevards. They may find encouragement in this Cholula labor of love and faith, done probably at small expense, for love and faith work cheap; done in the long-vanished centuries, when love and faith, if no holier and warmer than now, were none the less active and powerful in their ignorance—more so, I fear, than ours is, with all the light of the Gospel shining straight upon our hearts. Shall these poor blinded worshipers, like the men of Sodom and those of Chorazin, rise up in the judgment against us, saying, "If we had seen your day we should have accepted it in gladness and fullness of heart?"
We ride round the church where we have been looking and moralizing, witness the verdant and magnificent desolation on every side, pass through the still, deserted town, and climb the sides of the man-made hill. The ascent convinces you of its artificial construction and of its remarkable proportions. These forty acres are piled up in valleys and hill slopes, irregular and natural to-day. The path is cut under steep and lofty cliffs, on whose exposed side is a mass of stratifications, brick and clay, in regular layers. Trees grow along the path, tall and old; fruit and flower trees of the tropics, brilliant in colors and green with fruit. Orchards open half-way up; ravines drop down close to the summit. All the traits of natural hills appear.
The pyramid once stood, evidently, near the heart of the town. From it, in every direction, straight and comely avenues still proceed. From these, equally straight streets stretch for a mile or more in all directions. These streets, except a square or two about the plaza, are entirely void of houses, except the churches. These stand forth on all sides, near and far, some skirting the bases of the mountain range, whose edge comes within two or three miles of this spot. We counted forty-one of these edifices, and some were omitted even then. Almost fifty churches still stand about this pyramid, many of them large and elaborate structures, all of them erected at no small cost by the conquerors and their successors. The Indian Mecca is gone, but these efforts to subdue it to the true faith remain.
