uch a _teponaztli_,
which is still preserved among the Indians of Huatusco, an Indian
village near Mirador in the tierra templada, where the inhabitants have
had their customs comparatively little altered by intercourse with
white men. They keep this drum as a sacred instrument, and beat it only
at certain times of the year, though they have no reason to give for
doing so. It is to be regretted that Heller did not take a note of the
particular days on which this took place; for the times of the Mexican
festivals are well known, and this information would have settled the
question whether the Indians of the present day have really any
definite recollection of their old customs.

Drums of this kind do not belong exclusively to Mexico. Among all the
tribes of North America they were one of the principal "properties"
used by the Medicine-men in their ceremonies; and among the tribes
which have not been christianized they are still to be found in use.
After we left Mexico, Mr. Christy visited some tribes in the Hudson's
Bay Territory; and on one occasion, happening to assist at a festival
in which just such a wooden drum was used, he bought it of the
Medicine-man of the tribe, and packed it off triumphantly to his
museum.

A few picture-writings are still to be seen in the Museum, which, with
the few preserved in Europe, are all we have left of these interesting
records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and
Tezcuco. Some were burnt or destroyed during the sieges of the cities,
some perished by mere neglect, but the great mass was destroyed by
archbishop Zumarraga, when he made an attempt--and, to some extent, a
successful one--to obliterate every trace of heathenism, by destroying
all the monuments and records in the country. One of the
picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was
sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived
white men, their ships and horses, and their cannons with fire and
smoke issuing from their mouths. Another shows a white man being
sacrificed, of course one of the Spanish prisoners. The pictorial
history of the migration of the Aztecs is here, and a list of tributes
paid to the Mexican sovereign; the different articles being drawn with
numbers against each, to show the quantities to be paid, as in the
Egyptian inscriptions. Lord Kingsborough's great work contains
fac-similes of several Mexican manuscripts, and in Humboldt's _V