thing not very likely to be missed will not be astonished to
hear of the same thing being done to a great extent some six or eight
years before our visit.

The stone known as the statue of the war-goddess is a huge block of
basalt covered with sculptures. The antiquaries think that the figures
on it stand for different personages, and that it is three
gods,--Huitzilopochtli the god of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and
Mictlanteuctli the god of hell. It has necklaces of alternate hearts
and dead man's hands, with death's heads for a central ornament. At the
bottom of the block is a strange sprawling figure, which one cannot see
now, for it is the base which rests on the ground; but there are two
shoulders projecting from the idol, which show plainly that it did not
stand on the ground, but was supported aloft on the tops of two
pillars. The figure carved upon the bottom represents a monster holding
a skull in each hand, while others hang from his knees and elbows. His
mouth is a mere oval ring, a common feature of Mexican idols, and four
tusks project just above it. The new moon laid down like a bridge forms
his forehead, and a star is placed on each side of it. This is thought
to have been the conventional representation of Mictlanteuctli (Lord of
the Land of the Dead), the god of hell, which was a place of utter and
eternal darkness. Probably each victim as he was led to the altar could
look up between the two pillars and see the hideous god of hell staring
down upon him from above.

There is little doubt that this is the famous war-idol which stood on
the great teocalli of Mexico, and before which so many thousands of
human victims were sacrificed. It lay undisturbed underground in the
great square, close to the very site of the teocalli, until sixty years
ago. For many years after that it was kept buried, lest the sight of
one of their old deities might be too exciting for the Indians, who, as
I have mentioned before, had certainly not forgotten it, and secretly
ornamented it with garlands of flowers while it remained above ground.

The "sacrificial stone," so called, which also stands in the court-yard
of the Museum, was not one of the ordinary altars on which victims were
sacrificed. These altars seem to have been raised slabs of hard stone
with a protuberant part near one end, so that the breast of the victim
was raised into an arch, which made it more easy for the priest to cut
across it with his obsidian knife. T