The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1909-11-27
AN ARCHBISHOP AND HIS DEAD CITY.

ArcnDlSnOp 0TeSOTy O1lloW VI OdAaCo, AAlo<AiNO'
after touring the United States, sailed from San
Francisco for his own home last Thursday. The
distinguished prelate 68 years of age, was born
in Puebla, Mexico, and at early age was sent by
his father, Englishman naturalized in Mexico, to
be educated at the famous Jesuit college of Stony
hurst, England. Finishing his classics and philos-
ophy at Stonyhurst, he moved to Louvain, Belgium,
and completed four years. course in theology and
canon law. He then rounded out his education by
taking a psychological course at the Academia
del Nobili Ecclesiastical, founded in 1901 by Pope
Clement XII to prepare for the diplomatic service
of the Holy See young ecclesiastics trained in the
juridical sciences and in foreign diplomacy.
The ecclesiastical province which he spiritually
governs is on the Gulf of Tehuantepec, Pacific
ocean, mm ediatey to the west of the great PENN
sua of Yucatan.
The illustrious Archbishop enthusiastically rules
region where are to be seen probably the oldest
ruins the continent of the two Americas, remains
of city which the despair of antiquarians and
which antedate, in the opinion of LIE Plongeon the
deluge. From the City of Oaxaca, days journey
by stage are the ruins of Militia and not far from
them, in the churchyard of Santa Maria del Tule
is of the biggest if not the biggest tree in the
world, not excepting the giants of Calaveras, Cali
fornia. Sometime in the remote past lightning or
a fierce hurricane destroyed its height reducing it
to its present standing of one hundred and some
odd feet. Six feet from the ground this wonderful
cypress is 154 feet in circumference. Twenty-eight
men of average reach, with outstretched arms,
touching fingertips just circle its giant girth
On the east side of the tree, embedded in the bark,
is tablet placed there by Won Humboldt, the Ger
in 1904. 1t is barely decipherable.
But the remains of the Totec city of Militia are
today almost as they were when Cortes visited them
in $780, after he was created Marquis of 0axaca by
royal order of the Spanish king, Charles Y. For
centuries it may be for thousands of years. through
the long ages, the walls of Militia have defied the
ravages of time, of earthquakes and of tropical
storms. What distinguishes the ruins of the Toltec
city from all other remains of pre-Spanish archi-
lecture are SIX columns of porphyry eight feet in
circumference and fourteen feet high. standing in
the center of what was once a great hall. They
have neither pedestal capital nor architrave but are
symmetricaly rounded, as if done by a lathe Thew
said to be the only examples of the kind found
in the ruined cities of Mexico, Yucatan and Central
America. Of the three great groups of ruins stand
ing In the Mitliah waste that of the Kappa is the
most imposing. This is a cyclopean building 2s4
feet by 108, with walls five or six feet thick Two
great stone pillars, twelve feet high support the
Intel of the doorway. stone carved passage leads
into the audience chamber an attractive room with
its walls worked in curious mosaics, and showing
a setting of tile plates resembling somewhat the
style of the early Greeks.
Some of the abandoned houses and TEMPLES are
IN falrly good state of preservation and furnish
interesting examples of the skillful handiwork of
race OF men whose history is forgotten and buried
Tor all time with the race itself One thing is COR
tain, the men who hewed from the quarries and tbe
mechanics who chlzzed and carved these nonolitbe
and huge lintels had no tempered tools If ei+bor
iron or copper. We searched in vain. on returning
from Militia to Mexico City, through the national
museum and the school of mines. but found no snec
linens of iron chisels or tempered conner tools
In the hewing of these immense pillars from the
mountain side, chipping and scraping them into
their present form, in the lifting and setting them
IN their places and in the discovery and mixing of
an lmperlshabe cement, these ancient builders gave
proof OF mechanical and architectural civilization
Of high order. How were these huge shafts ont
out OF and transported from the mountains miles
away! Today understand how the Egvntian
workmen split from its matrix and freigbted 70