2()5 
coiuili ics. As the Mexican prisoners were of- 
fered up in tile temples, it would appear natural 
enough, that the triumphs of a warrior king 
should be figured around the fatal stone, on 
w^hich the topiltzln (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 teocalU ; 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. 
