224 
MEXICO. 
two walled chambers, or sinks, like wells ; — one of which has a depth of 
about fifteen feet, and the other rather less. The walls of the entrance 
and of the sinks are of the common adobe, and there are no remains 
either of sculpture, painting, or human bodies, to reward the groper 
through the dark and dusty adit. I could perceive no sign of an entrance 
in the "House of the Sun." 
It is useless to inquire into the antiquity of these pyramids. There is 
no authentic tradition of their builders, although they are usually referred 
to the Toltecs. Clavigero* is very brief in his remarks in regard to 
them, but says that in the temples dedicated to the Sun and Moon, there 
were two idols of huge bulk carved of stone and covered with gold. The 
breast of the idol of the Sun was grooved out, and a massive image of the 
planet, in solid gold, was fixed in the hollow. Of this the conquerors 
immediately possessed themselves, while the idol was destroyed by order 
of the Bishop of Mexico, and the fragments remained in the neighborhood 
until the end of the seventeenth century. A huge globular mass of gra- 
nite at the spot indicated on the plan by the letter B — measuring nineteen 
feet and eight inches in circumference — may probably be either part of its 
ruins, or the sacrificial stone upon whose convex surface thousands have 
been offered to the gods. 
A short distance west of this ball, at the place marked with the letter 
C, in the middle of the small semicircular elevation of ground and stones, 
(on the top of which are three tumuli with five more on its eastern base,^ 
is the curious stone of which the following is an exact design. 
* Vol. i. p. 268 and 286 
