INTERESTING RUINS. Remarkable Pyramids Discovered in Sonora.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 74, 1 November 1884, Page 4

INTERESTING RUINS. Remarkable Pyramids Discovered in Sonora.

Ancient ruins havo recently been discovered in Sonora, Mexico, says the New Orleans " Times-Democrat," which, if reports are true, surpass anything of the kind yet found on this continent. The ruins are said to be about four miles south-east of Magdalena. There is one pyramid which has a base of 1,350 feet, and rises to a height of 750 feet ; there is a winding roadway leading from the bottom up an easy grade to the top wide enough for carriages to travel, said to be 25 miles in length ; the outer walls on the roadway are laid in solid masonry, huge blocks of granite, in rubble work, and the circles as uniform and the grade as regular as could be made in these days by our best engineers. The wall is only occasionally exposed, being covered over with debris and earth, and in many places the sahuaro and other indigenous plants have sprung up, giving the pyramid the appearance of a mountain. To the east of the pyramid is a small mountain about the same size, and which rises to about the same height, and, if reports are true, will prove more interesting to the archaeologist than th» pyramid. There seems to be a heavy layer of a species of gypsum about half way up the mountain, which is as white as snow and may be cut into any conceivable shape, yet sufficiently hard to retain its shape after being cut. In this layer of stone a people of an unknown age have cut hundreds upon hundredsof rooms from 6 x 10 to 16 x 18 feet square. These rooms are cut into the solid stone, and so even and true are the walls, floors and ceilings, plumb and level as to defy variation. There are no windows in the 1 rooms and but one entrance, which is always from the top. The rooms are about eight feet high from floor to ceiling ; the Stone is so white that it seems transparent, and the rooms are not at all dark. On the walls of these rooms are numerous Hieroglyphics and representations of human forms, with hands and feet of human beings, cut in the stone in different places. But strange to say, the hands have five fingers and a thumb, and the feet have six toes. Charcoal is found on the floors of many of the rooms, which would indicate that they built fires in their rooms. Stone implements of every description are to be found in and about the rooms. The houses or rooms are one above the other to three or four stories high j but between each story there is a jog or recess the full width of the room below, so that they present the appearance of large steps leading up the mountain.