398 



tured 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 wakke. 

 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 must 

 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 



