s hardly care to
use it. The terra-cotta rattles are very characteristic. They have
little balls in them which shake about, and they puzzled us much as the
apple-dumpling did good King George, for we could not make out very
easily how the balls got inside. They were probably attached very
slightly to the inside, and so baked and then broken loose. We often
got little balls like schoolboys' marbles, among lots of Mexican
antiquities, and these were most likely the balls out of broken
rattles.

Burning incense was always an important part of the Mexican ceremonies.
When the white men were on their march to the capital, the inhabitants
used to come out to meet them with such plates as we saw here, and burn
copal before the leaders; and in Indian villages to this day the
procession on saints' days would not be complete without men burning
incense, not in regular censers, but in unglazed earthen platters such
as their forefathers used.

[Illustration: THE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF AN AZTEC MASK. _Sculptured out
of hard brown lava. Twelve inches high; ten inches wide. (From Mr.
Christy's Collection.)_]

Our word _copal_ is the Mexican _copalli_. There are a few other
Mexican words which have been naturalized in our European languages, of
course indicating that the things they represent came from Mexico.
_Ocelotl_ is _ocelot_; _Tomatl_ is _tomata_; _Chilli_ is the Spanish
_chile_ and our _chili_; _Cacahuatl_ is _cacao_ or cocoa; and
_Chocolatl_, the beverage made from the cacao-bean with a mixture of
vanilla, is our chocolate.

Cacao-beans were used by the Mexicans as money. Even in Humboldt's
time, when there was no copper coinage, they were used as small change,
six for a halfpenny; and Stephens says the Central Americans use them
to this day. A mat in Mexican is _petlatl_, and thence a basket made of
matting was called _petlacalli_--"mathouse." The name passed to the
plaited grass cigar-cases that are exported to Europe; and now in Spain
any kind of cigar-case is called a _petaca_.

The pretty little ornamented calabashes--used, among other purposes,
for drinking chocolate out of--were called by the Mexicans _xicalli_, a
word which the Spaniards made into _jicara_, and now use to mean a
chocolate-cup; and even the Italians have taken to it, and call a
tea-cup a _chicchera_.

There is a well-known West Indian fruit which we call an _avocado_ or
_alligator-pear_, and which the French call _avocat_ and the Spaniards
_agua