106 MEXICO 
The last figures represent flageolets, made, like the whistles, of baked 
clay. They have four stops, and the sound is, of course, very monotonous. 
I have seen them used, even at the present day, in some religious ceremo- 
nials of the Indians, as an .accompaniment to a drum which, though not 
shaped like the ieponazth, produced quite as little music. 
Around the walls of this chamber of the Museum are hung old Indian 
paintings of portions of Mexican history ; genealogies of the Mexican 
monarchs; computations of time; plans of the city before the conquest, 
and pictures of various battles and skirmishes that occurred between the 
natives and the invaders. I regret to say that many of these are only 
copies, the originals having been taken to England shortly after the estab- 
lishment of Independence, whence they have never been returned. They 
are placed better there, perhaps, than they would be in Mexico; where the 
existing remains of antiquity excite no curiosity, and lie, from year to 
year, covered with dust, and unexplored on the walls and in the closets 
of a university. With the exception of Don Carlos Bustamante, I know no 
one who has devoted an hour, of late years, to these interesting studies ; 
and the curator of the Museum, Don Isidrio Gondra, is so continually oc- 
cupied with his political duties, in the editing of the Government Gazette, 
and lacks so greatly the encouragement of the Government, and its dedi- 
cation of even a thousand dollars a year to archaiological researches, that 
he does no more than open the doors of these saloons on stated days and 
smoke his cigar quietly in a corner ; while the ladies, gentlemen, loafers 
and leperos, wander from case to case, and lift up their hands in astonish- 
ment at the grotesque forms. 
What those forms and figures mean ; what was represented by such 
an idol, or what by another — receives the unfailing Mexican answer : 
" Quien sale ?'' — " who knows ? who can tell ?" 
But I must not leave this building, without some remarks on a vase, 
of which the sketch on the next page is an accurate drawing, represent- 
ing both its sides. 
