142 APPENDIX. 



which was the prince's palace, and the other the temple. Each of them was forty 

 feet square, and the walls ten feet high and two feet thick, the roof in the form of a 

 cupola, and covered with a mat of divers colors. * * * As to their religion, 

 the prince told me that they worship the sun ; that they had their temples, their 

 altars, and their priests. That in their temple there was a fire which burned per- 

 petually, as the proper emblem of the sun. That at the decrease of the moon, they 

 carried a great dish of their greatest dainties to the door of the temple, as an obla- 

 tory sacrifice ; which the priests offered to their God, and then carried it home 

 and feasted themselves therewith. * * * The next day I had the curiosity to 

 see their temple, and the old gentleman led me thither. The structure of it was 

 exactly the same with that of the prince's house. As to the outside, it is encompassed 

 with a great high wall, the space betwixt that and the temple forming a kind of court 

 where people may walk. On the top of the wall were several pikes to be seen, 

 upon which were stuck the heads of their own most notorious criminals, or of their 

 enemies. On the top of the frontispiece, there is a great knob raised, all covered 

 round with hair, and above that a heap of scalps, in the form of a trophy. * * 

 The inside of the temple is only a Nave, painted on all sides, at top with all sorts 

 of figures ; in the midst of it is a hearth raised in the form of an altar, upon which 

 there is burning continually three great billets of wood, standing up on end ; and 

 two priests, dressed in white vestments, are ever looking after it to make up the 

 fire and supply it. It is round this the people come to say their prayers with 

 strange kind of hummings. The prayers are three times a day : at sunrise, at 

 noon, and at sunset. They made me take notice of a sort of closet cut out of the 

 wall, the inside of which was very fine. I could only see the roof of it, on the 

 top of which there hung a couple of spread eagles, which looked towards the sun.* 

 I wanted to go in ; but they told me it was the tabernacle of their God, and that 

 it was permitted to none but their high priest to go in. And I was told it was 

 the repository of their wealth and treasures, as jewels, gold and silver, precious 

 stones, and some goods that came out from Europe, which they had from their 

 neighbors.— (La Salle, Trans. N. Y. Hist. Soc, Vol. II., pp. 269, 272.) 



THE TEMPLES OF MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AND PERU. 



The pyramidal temples of the Aztecs, which perhaps better deserve the name 

 of altars, or the scriptural name of " high places," were always surrounded by large 

 enclosures, most usually of a square form. The great temple of Mexico, which is 

 described by all the early authors as nearly identical in form and structure with 

 all the principal temples of Anahuac, consisted first of an immense square area, 

 " surrounded by a wall of stone and lime, eight feet thick, with battlements, orna- 

 mented with many stone figures in the form of serpents." The extent of this 

 enclosure, which occupied the centre of the ancient city, may be inferred from the 



* Adair speaks of " chenibimical figures in the Sjiihedria" of the Muscogulges or Creeks. — (p. 30.) 



