We are not yet inured to our life at an altitude of 13,000 feet, and our daily ascensions are painful in the extreme ; our faces literally peel in this sharp wind and hot sun, whilst our hands are frightfully chapped and almost paralysed. It would be difficult to bear up long against our hardships were it not for the stupendous result of our excavations : kitchen utensils, every variety of vases representing the Toltec god Tlaloc, fruit cups, jewel cups, with feet shaped like a duck's bill or a boar's head ; chocolate cups with porpoise-like handles ; beads, jewels, a whole civilisation emerges from these tombs, and carries us back to the life of this long-forgotten people. Here we have caricatures of ancient warriors ; further on a water-carrier bearing his jars like the modern "aguadores;" next are toys and tiny terra-cotta chariots, some are broken, some still preserve their four wheels ; they were, presumably, a fond mother's memento who, ages gone by, buried them with her beloved child. These chariots are shaped like a flattened cayote (a kind of long-bodied fox) with its straight ears and pointed face, and the wheels fit into four terra-cotta stumps ; on my renewing the wood axle-tree, which had been destroyed long since, the chariots began to move.

Many more objects were brought to light from these tombs—richly ornamented "fusaïoles," marbles, necklaces, babytables, which, like the toy chariots, represented some quadruped—resembling Greek toys. This coincidence between people so different and so far removed from each other is not surprising, for elementary ideas generally find a common expression. It should also be observed that these toys, however rude, do not necessarily mark a very ancient epoch. Early manifestations live on through ages and are found side by side with the highest civilisations, and are still to be met among the people long after the well-to-do possess objects of art.