BOURKE. ] DOUGH IDOLS. 525 
‘‘bledos” and ‘*maiz” were different things.! A few lines farther on 
Duran tells us that this cake, or bread, was made by the nuns of the 
temple, ‘“‘las mozas del recogimiento de este templo,” and that they 
ground up a great quantity of the seed of bledos, which they call 
huauhtly, together with toasted maize. ‘Molian mucha cantidad de 
semilla de bledos que ellos Haman huauhtly juntamente con maiz 
tostado.”* He then shows that the “honey” (miel) spoken of by the 
other writers was the thick juice of the maguey. ‘ Despues de molido, 
amasabanlo con miel negra de los magueis.” 
Acosta describes a Mexican feast, held in our month of May, in which 
appeared an idol called Huitzlipotchli, made of ‘‘mays rosty,” ‘‘se- 
mence de blettes,” and ‘“‘amassoient avec du miel.”° 
In the above citations it will be seen that huauhtly or yuauhtli and 
tzoally were one and the same. We also find some of the earliest if not 
the very earliest references to the American popped corn. 
That the Mexicans should have had such festivals or feasts in honor 
of their god of battles is no more extraordinary than that in our own 
country all military reunions make it a point to revert to the * hard 
tack” issued during the campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Many 
other references to the constant use as a food, or at least as a sacrificial 
food, of the bledos might be supplied if needed. Thus Diego Duran 
devotes the twelfth chapter of his third book to an obscure account of 
a festival among the Tepanecs, in which appeared animal gods made 
of **masa de semilla de bledos,” which were afterwards broken and 
eaten. 
Torquemada speaks of such idols employed in the worship of snakes 
and mountains.* In still another place this authority tells us that sim- 
ilar figures were made and eaten by bride and groom at the Aztec 
marriage ceremony.? 
The ceremonial manner in which these seeds were ground recalls the 
fact that the Zuni regard the stones used for grinding kunque as sacred 
and will not employ them for any other purpose. 
Idols made of dough much after the fashion of the Aztecs are to be 
found among the Mongols. Meignan speaks of seeing ‘an idol, quite 
open to the sky and to the desert, representing the deity of travelers. 
It was made of compressed bread, covered over with some bituminous 
substance, and perched on a horse of the same material, and held in its 
hand a lancein Don Quixote attitude. Its horrible features were sur- 
mounted with a shaggy tuft of natural hair. A great number of offer- 
ings of all kinds were scattered on the ground all around. Five or six 
images, formed also of bread, were bending in an attitude of prayer 
before the deity.”® 
1See notes already given from Buckingham Smith’s translation of Vaca. 
2 Diego Duran, vol. 3, p. 195. 
3 José Acosta, Hist. des Indes, ed. of Paris, 1600, liv. 5, cap. 24, p. 250. 
4Monarchia Indiana. lib. 10, cap, 33. 
5 Thid., lib. 6, cap. 48. 
®From Paris to Pekin, London, 1885, pp. 312, 313. 
