dinal points) ascend these terraces in the
middle of each lateral facade of the quadrangle; and four gates fronting
the same cardinal points, conduct from the top of each staircase into
the body of the building, or into the great court. The great entrance,
through a pilastered gateway, fronts the east, and descends by a second
flight of steps into the cloistered court. On the various pilasters of
the upper terrace are the metopes, with singular sculptures. On
descending the second staircase into the cloistered court, on one side,
appears the triple pyramidal tower, which may be inferred, from the
curious distribution of little cells which surround the central room of
each story, to have been employed as a place of royal or private
sepulture. It would be pronounced a striking and tasteful structure,
according to any architectural rule. On another side of the same
cloistered court is the detached temple of the chief god, to whom the
whole religious building appears to have been devoted, who appears to
have been the great and only god of the nations who worshipped in this
temple. Beneath the cloisters, entered by staircases from above, are
what we believe to be the initiatory galleries. These opened into
rooms, one of which has a stone couch in it, and others are
distinguished by unintelligible apparatus carved in stone. The only
symbol described as found within these sacred haunts is, however,
perfectly Asiatic, and perfectly intelligible; we mean two contending
serpents. The remnant of an sitar, or high place, occupies the centre
of the cloistered quadrangle. The rest of the edifice is taken up with
courts, palaces, detached temples, open divans, baths, and streets of
priestly cells, or houses, in a greater or less degree of dilapidation."

...

"It is perfectly clear, from the few records of their religious rites
which have come down to us, and which are principally derived from the
extraordinary rolls of American papyrus, [formed of prepared fibres of
the Maguery] on which their beautiful hieroglyphical system is preserved
(there is one of considerable extent in the Dresden Museum), that they
were as simple, perhaps we may add with propriety, as innocent. Not
only does it appear that they had no human sacrifices, but no animal
sacrifices. Flowers and fruits were the only offerings made to the
presiding divinity of their temples."

But who were the Tultequans and Azeteques, the founders of this empire
in