"We rode across the desert, carrying the treasure on mules.

The air was still, and the heat very heavy.

The desert descended in a great hollow: you told me it was where, in former days, the ocean had been.

At last there were rocky hills before us; we rode towards a great rock shaped like the pyramid on which the sacrifices were held in Tenochtitlan.

We passed round its base, and entered a deep and narrow valley, that seemed to have been ploughed out of the heart of the earth and to descend into it.