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lured part could be seen only by putting it in a 

 vertical position. When Cortez destroyed the 

 temples, he broke the idols, and every thing- that 

 belonged to the ancient rites. Those masses of 

 stone, which were too large to be destroyed, were 

 buried, in order to conceal them from the eyes of 

 a vanquished people. Though the circle, which 

 contains the hieroglyphics of the days, is only 

 three metres four decimetres in diameter, we 

 found, that the whole stone formed a rectangled 

 parallelopipedon of four metres length, as many 

 metres broad, and one metre thick. 



The nature of this stone is not calcareous, as 

 Mr. Gama asserts ; it is a blackish gray trap- 

 pean porphyry, with basis of basaltic ivakke. 

 On carefully examining some detached frag- 

 ments, I perceived hornblende, several very 

 slender crystals of vitreous feldspar, and, what is 

 very remarkable, sprinklings of mica. This 

 rock, cracked and full of small cavities, is desti- 

 tute of quartz, like almost all rocks of trappean 

 formation. As its actual weight is more than 

 twenty-four tuns, and no mountain within eight 

 or ten leagues of the city could furnish a por- 

 phyry of this grain and color, we may easily ima- 

 gine the difficulties, which the Mexicans mus* 

 have found in transporting so enormous a mass 

 to the foot of the Teocalli. The sculpture in re- 

 lievo is as well polished as any other to be found 

 in Mexican works ; the concentric circles, the 



