108 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



depofited the box in the place deftined for his fepulchre. 

 The four following days they made oblations of eatables 

 over the fepulchre ; on the fifth, they facrificed fome 

 Haves, and alfo fome others on the twentieth, fortieth, 

 fixtieth, and eightieth day after. From that time for- 

 ward, they facrificed no more human victims ; but every 

 year they celebrated the day of the funeral with facrifices 

 of rabbits, butterflies, quails, and other birds, and with 

 oblations of bread, wine, copal, flowers, and certain little 

 reeds filled with aromatic fubflances, which they called 

 acqjetl. This anniverfary was held for four years. 



The bodies of the dead were in general burned ; they 

 buried the bodies entire of thofe only who had been 

 drowned, or had died of dropfy, and fome other dif- 

 eafes ; but what was the reafon of thefe exceptions we 

 know not. 



There was no fixed place for burials. Many ordered 

 their aflies to be buried near to fome temple or altar, 

 fome in the fields, and others in thofe facred places of 

 the mountains where facrifices ufed to be made. The 

 aflies of the kings and lords, were, for the moft part de- 

 pofited in the towers of the temples (o), efpecially in thofe 

 of the greater temple. Clofe to Teotihuacan, where 

 there were many temples, there were alfo innumerable 

 fepulchres. The tombs of thofe whofe bodies had been 

 buried entire, agreeably to the teftimony of the anony- 

 mous conqueror who faw them, were deep ditches, form- 

 ed with ftone and lime, within which they placed the 

 bodies in a fitting pofture upon icpalli, or low feats, to- 

 gether with the inftruments of their art or profellion. 



If 



(o) Solis, in his Hiftory of the Conqueft of Mexico, affirms, that the afhea 

 of the kings were depofited in Chapoltepec; but this is falfe, and contradicts 

 the report of the conqueror Cortes whofe panegyric he wrote, of Bernal Dias, 

 and other eye-witnefles of the contrary. 



