Show A WONDERFUL RELIC CHARLES J WIMPLE a wealthy miner who has been operating in mexico wakes makes the following statement to a representative of the sau san francisco fall call you have asked me to give e an account of the interesting mountain my friend jesse D grant and myself saw during our trip ahr through ll 11 ah mexico en route to this city re well 11 that moun tain is at once one of the most gigantic 6 exhibitions of mans handiwork and thing ething almost beyond credence w were ere wo we not already familiar with the works w of tho the azteca just imagine a valley forty by thirty miles in area and from its center ris rising 1 g a mound over 1200 feet in height then you can realize the first effect t created upon our minds when hen we came before the hill I 1 am to describe my foreman was with us and had partly prepared us for the surprise but we had treated his story w with ith incredulous remarks and had by no means suspected he be had but bat given a modest description of the mound we gazed it at the top and allowed our eyes to h how the windings of a road down 0 to o the base wo we went around the base and conjectured it was about one and a half miles in j circumference then we L started for the he summit the roadway was built 3 of solid rock clear to the pinnacle and was wa from thirty to forty feet in width A A wall of solid rock formed a dounda tion and an inside wall at the same 1 time the outer edge of the road was a unguarded these stones weigh all the way up to a ton each and are not cemented the roadway is as level as a floor and is covered with broken pieces of earthenware water vessels half way up the mountain is an altar ent cut in solid rock in the niche is a boulder that must weigh at least six tons the boulder is of different stone from that used in the walls the rocks in the walls are dressed b by skilled workmen but stenot are not polished polisha we saw raw no inscriptions in had no po time to spare in making a searching investigation we did look for r arrowheads or other warlike implements to satisfy ourselves that the mound had not baen used for defensive or offensive purposes nor was there any evidence to prove that the for the purpose of witnessing bull fights and other sports in the valley I 1 could only conclude tho aztec sun worship I 1 P pers expended years of labor on the hill in order that they might have an appropriate place to celebrate their imposing festivals inasmuch as the roadway was strewn with broken earthenware and those scions of a bygone and notable race were known to carry at sunrise large quantities of water in earthenware jars to an eminence oi and there pour out the liquid and smash the vessels when we descended we brought with us a number of small sea shells which had petrified and if you look at these on my table you yon will see how they have been perforated by the indians we again took a long look at the he mountain and saw it was in in shape and that thab the upward road roa commenced on the eastern side I 1 have bave traveled on both sides of the mountains from british columbia to central america and on either side of the sierra madres where the cliff dwellers have left such remarkable mementoes of their skill and cu customs stoma but I 1 have never witnessed anything so wonderful and magnificent as the mound which I 1 have been telling you about the valley is about feet above A the sea level and is about seventy miles f from rom the coast it is situated in sonora between the cities of altay altar and magdalena Mig dalena and near the magdalena river we called the curios curiosity palisades mountain and it is we aeu named |