MODES OF BURIAL. 27 



but unaccompanied by any musical instrument. Upon their arrival at the lower 

 area of the temple, the high priests, together with their servants, came out to 

 meet the royal corpse, which, without delay, they placed upon the funeral pile of 

 odoriferous resinous woods, together with a large quantity of copal and other aro- 

 matic substances. While the royal corpse and all its clothing, arms, and ensigns 

 were burning, they sacrificed, at the bottom of the stairs of the temple, a great 

 number of slaves who had belonged to the deceased and also those which had 

 been presented by tlie lords. Along with tlie slaves they likewise sacrificed 

 some of the deformed men, whom the king liad collected in his palace for his 

 entertainment, in order that they might give him the same pleasure in the other 

 world ; and for the same reason they used to sacrifice some of his wives. Acosta 

 says (lib. v. cap. 8), tliat at the funeral of a lord, all the members of his family were 

 sacrificed. But this is grossly false, and in itself incredible ; for, had this been the 

 case, the nobles of Mexico would soon have been exterminated. There is no record, 

 in the History of Mexico, that, at the death of the king, any of his brothers were 

 sacrificed, as this author would intimate. How is it possible that they could 

 practise such cruelty, when the new king was usually elected from among the 

 brothers of the deceased 1 The number of the victims was proportioned to the 

 grandeur of the funeral, and amounted sometimes, as several historians have 

 affirmed, to two hundred. Among the other sacrifices, tlie techiehi was not omit- 

 ted ; they were firmly persuaded that, without such a guide, it would be impos- 

 sible to get through some dangerous ways which led to tlie otlier world. 



The day following, the ashes and the teeth which remained entire were gathered 

 up ; they sought for the emerald which had hung to the under lip until they found 

 it; all were then put into the box with the hair, and deposited in the place des- 

 tined for their sepulchre. During the four following days they made oblations of 

 eatables over the place of burial ; on the fifth they sacrificed several slaves, and 

 also others on the twentieth, fortieth, sixtieth, and eightieth day after. From that 

 time forward they sacrificed no more human victims ; but, every year, they celebrated 

 the day of the funeral with offerings of rabbits, butterflies, quails and other birds, 

 and with oblations of bread, wine, copal, flowers, and certain little reeds filled with 

 aromatic substances, which they called acajetl. This anniversary was held in the 

 four succeeding years. 



The bodies of the dead were usually burned. The bodies of those only who 

 had been drowned, or had died of dropsy or some other chronic disease, were 

 buried. But what was the reason of these exceptions, we know not. 



There was no fixed place for burials. Many ordered their ashes to be buried 

 near to some temple or altar, some in the fields, and others in those sacred places 

 of the mountains wlicre sacrifices used to be made. The ashes of the kings and 

 lords were for the most part deposited in the toAvers of the temples, especially in 

 those of the great temple. Soils, in his "History of the Conquest of Mexico," 

 affirms that the ashes of the kings were deposited in Chapoltepec ; but this is false, 

 and contradicts the report of the conqueror Cortez whose panegyric he wrote, of 

 Bernal Dias, and of other eye-witnesses to the contrary. Close to Teotihuacan, 

 where there were many temples, there were also innumerable sepulchres. The tombs 



