They have cut a road through one corner of the pyramid, and this cutting exposed a chamber within.  Humboldt describes this chamber as roofed with blocks, each overlapping the one before, till they can be made to meet by a block of ordinary size.  This is the false arch so common in Egypt and Peru, and in the ruined cities of Central America.  Every child who builds houses with a box of bricks discovers it for himself.  The bridge at Tezcuco, already described, is much more remarkable in its structure.  Whether our inspection was careless, or whether the chamber has fallen in since Humboldt’s time, I cannot say, but we missed this peculiar roof.

There are several legends about the Pyramid of Cholula.  That recorded by Humboldt on the authority of a certain Dominican friar, Pedro de los Rios, I mention—­not because of its intrinsic value, which is very slight, but because it will enable us to see the way in which legends grew up under the hands of the early missionaries, who were delighted to find fragments of Scripture-history among the traditions of the Ancient Mexicans, and who seem to have taken down from the lips of their converts, as native traditions, the very Bible-stories that they had been teaching them, mixed however with other details, of which it is hard to say whether they were imagined on purpose to fill up gaps in the story, or whether they were really of native traditional origin.

Pedro de los Rios’ story tells us that the land of Anahuac was inhabited by giants; that there was a great deluge, which devastated the earth; that all the inhabitants were turned into fishes, except seven who took refuge in a cave (apparently with their wives).  Years after the waters had subsided, and the earth had been re-peopled by these seven men, their leader began to build a vast pyramid, whose top should reach to heaven.  He built it of bricks baked in the sun, which were brought from a great distance, passing them from hand to hand by a file of men.  The gods were enraged at the presumption of these men, and they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its building to be discontinued.  It is stated that at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that fell upon the top of the pyramid when the fire struck it.

The history of the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula.  Something like it at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues to a crowd of men standing below.