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countries. As the Mexican prisoners were of- 

 fered up in the temples, it would appear natural 

 enough, that the triumphs of a warrior king 

 should be figured around the fatal stone, on 

 which the topiltzin (the sacrificing priest) tore 

 out the heart of the unhappy victim. What has 

 caused this hypothesis to be adopted is, that the 

 upper surface of the stone has a groove of some 

 depth, which appears to have been cut to let the 

 blood run off. 



Notwithstanding these apparent proofs, I am 

 inclined to think, that the stone of the sacrifices 

 was never placed at the top of a teocalli ; but 

 was one of those stones, called temalacatl, on 

 which the combat of the gladiators took place 

 between the prisoner destined to be sacrificed 

 and a Mexican warrior. The real stone of sa- 

 crifices, that which crowned the platform of the 

 teocalli, was green, either jasper, or perhaps 

 jade * ; its form was that of a parallelopipedon, 

 fifteen or sixteen decimetres in length, and a 

 metre in breadth ; its surface was convex, so that 

 the victim stretched upon the stone had the 

 breast raised higher than the rest of his body. 

 No historian states, that this block of green 

 stone was sculptured ; the great hardness of the 

 rocks of jasper and jade no doubt formed an ob- 

 stacle to the execution of a bass-relief. On com- 



* Beilstein of Werner. 



