''of the American Indians. 349 



we fell into these errors, if they be errors. Give us a law, and 

 we will endeavour to embrace it with all our power*." This 

 is a clear acknowledgment that Mexico was founded after 

 1317. The Mongols in Asia raise pyramids or pillars of the 

 skulls of the slain, upon the field of victory. The Persians 

 have this horrid custom. ** The pillars are built of brick and 

 limey and into niches were thrust the heads of about one 

 thousand Russians, placed round the pillars in rows f ." 

 The Mexican Indians in Anahuac had pyramids of great dimen- 

 sions for their religious rites as fire-worshippers ; and it was in 

 these structures that they exhibited the skulls. *' The idols and 

 furniture of their temples were kept in three halls, so large as 

 to astonish the Spaniards. One was a great prison like a cage, 

 in which they lodged the idols taken from their enemies. In 

 other buildings of this kind, they preserved the heads of the 

 sacrificed captives ; in others, the heads were arranged upon 

 poles, or fixed against the walls. The greatest of these 

 buildings was a prodigious rampart of earth, longer than broad, 

 in the form of a truncated pyramid, 154 feet long at the base ; 

 the ascent to the plain at top was by thirty stairs.' Upon this 

 plain were erected, four feet asunder, seventy very long beams 

 bored from top to bottom ; sticks were passed through these 

 holes, from one beam to another, and upon them heads were 

 strung. There was a head between every stone upon the 

 stairs. At each end of this edifice, there was a tower which 

 appeared to have been made only of skulls and lime. The 

 skulls of ordinary victims were stripped of the scalp, but those 

 of great Avarriors they preserved with the skin, and beard, and 

 hair entire. There were 136,000 heads J. The Chichemecans 



• Peter Martyr, Decade v. — llakiuyt, iv. p. 567. 



f See Alexander's Travels from India to England in 1826. 



j Clavigero, vol. i. p. 266. "Timur ordered 120 towers to be made for the skulla 

 of 90,000 of the slain, at Bagdat in the year 1401." Sherefeddin, b. v. ch. xxxii. 

 Thus this barbarian custom was in practice at ihe same epoch in Asia and Mexico, 

 by Mongols in each country. The Mongols in Asia, who had so recently become 

 Mahomedans, retained this disgusting part of their former idolatry. The terrific 

 Calmuc idols Erlik-Han and Jamandaga (in Chappe, vol. i.) are crowned and hung 

 round with skulls and heads with hair on them in great numbers. Genghis killed 

 his prisoners immediately. Montezuma justified to Cortez the sacrificing them to 

 their gods instead of killing them when captured, — (C/auj^ero, ii. p.445). The 

 Peruvians did not sacrifice men, nor probably would the Mexicans have introduced 

 that custom, had it not been established by the numerous Aztecs who had arrived in 

 1178, thirty-five years before Genghis conquered Cathay and Korea. From that. 



APRIL— JULY, 1828, 2A • 



