Page:Appleton's Guide to Mexico.djvu/302

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274
CITIES AND ROUTES OF TRAVEL.

corn is cultivated along the route, and a few villages are passed, the principal one being Rincon de Roma. The scenery is uninteresting, and the road is good and comparatively level.

Some interesting ruins of Indian architecture are found at Quemada, about 30 miles southwest of Zacatecas, and 2½ miles north of the village of La Quemada, at an elevation of 7,406 feet above the sea-level.

The remains are situated on a rocky eminence that rises abruptly from the plain. It is called “El Cerro de los Edificios.” The summit is reached by a causeway. An area of six acres has been inclosed by a broad wall, forming a sort of citadel. This barrier surrounds a quadrangle 340 X 200 feet, which to the east is sheltered by a strong wall of unhewn stones, eight feet in thickness and eighteen in height. A raised terrace of twenty feet in width passes round the northern and eastern sides of this space, and on its southeast corner is yet standing a round pillar of rough stones of the same height as the wall, and nineteen feet in circumference.

There are vestiges of five other pillars on the eastern, and four on the northern terrace. There is another quadrangle surrounded by perfect walls of the same height and thickness as the former one, and measuring 134 x 137 feet. This space contains fourteen columns of equal dimensions with that of the adjacent inclosure. They were made of clay mixed with straw.

There is a flat-topped pyramid of hewn stown in one of the quadrangles. Two small pyramids may also be seen. One chamber has an irregular structure 7x5 feet near the center. It was probably an altar, and the room may have been used as the Hall of Sacrifice or Assembly. These ruins are probably the work of the Aztecs.

At Guadalupe, 4 miles from Zacatecas, the land rises rapidly. The former town is seen in the distance several