MEXICO. 



129 



tion, have been singularly apathetic with regard to the 

 vestiges of the ancient people upon whose seat of em- 

 pire they had established themselves by the right of 

 conquest. For two entire centuries the same insane 

 and bigoted spirit of wanton destruction, which the 

 Spanish historians show to have influenced the con- 

 querors, and to have caused the annihilation of much 

 that was curious and valuable, seems to have possessed 

 their descendants to a very late epoch, if not to the pres- 

 ent day. 



There is ample proof of this, in a pamphlet* now be- 

 coming rare, published by De Gama, a Spanish savant, 

 in 1792, to give a description of the two most remarka- 

 ble of the Toltec antiquities, the Goddess of War, and the 

 Sacrificial Stone, both of which were discovered accident- 

 ally two years previous. 



The goddess Teoyamiqui, or Cohuatlicue,f as De 

 Gama calls her, is a colossal figure about nine feet high, 

 hewn out of a solid block of basalt. The breadth is 

 about five feet, and it is three feet in thickness. It is 

 sculptured on all sides, and even underneath the feet, 

 having evidently been suspended at a height from the 

 ground, by two projections at the sides. The whole 

 configuration is the most hideous and deformed that the 

 fancy can paint, being a mass of serpents of all sizes, 

 with claws and tusks of ravenous beasts ornamented 

 with human hearts and sculls. 



The Stone of Sacrifices is a cylindrical mass of por- 

 phyry, of twenty-five feet in circumference, covered 

 both on the surface and sides with sculpture in relief. 

 It is strongly urged that this was not the altar implied 

 by the popular name, but one of the stones termed te- 

 malacatl, on which gladiatorial combats between prison- 

 ers of rank and the Mexican warriors took place on 



* Descripcion y cronologica de los piedras con ocasion del nuevo, 

 empedrado que se esta formendo en la plaza principal de Mejico se hal- 

 laron en alia. Ano de 1790, &c. — por Don Antonio de Leon y Gama. 



t Two different personages, by-the-by. Teoyamiqui was the wife of 

 Huitzipoctli, the god of war ; while Cohuatlicue was the goddess of 

 flowers, — HumboldVs Researches, vol. i., p. 266, ^ 



