tality.

These rites were mostly performed on the teocallis, or sacrificial
mounds, of which there were one or more in every Indian town. These were
huge artificial mounds of earth, built in the shape of truncated
pyramids, and faced all over with stone. They were from fifty to two
hundred feet high, and sometimes many hundreds of feet square at the
base. Upon the flat top of the pyramid stood a small tower,--the dingy
chapel which enclosed the idol. The grotesque face of the stone deity
looked down upon a cylindrical stone which had a bowl-like cavity in the
top,--the altar, or sacrificial stone. This was generally carved also,
and sometimes with remarkable skill and detail. The famous so-called
"Aztec Calendar Stone" in the National Museum of Mexico, which once gave
rise to so many wild speculations, is merely one of these sacrificial
altars, dating from before Columbus. It is a wonderful piece of Indian
stone-carving.

The idol, the inner walls of the temple, the floor, the altar, were
always wet with the most precious fluid on earth. In the bowl human
hearts smouldered. Black-robed wizards, their faces painted black with
white rings about eyes and mouth, their hair matted with blood, their
faces raw from constant self-torture, forever flitted to and fro,
keeping watch by night and day, ready always for the victims whom that
dreadful superstition was always ready to bring. The supply of victims
was drawn from prisoners taken in war, and from slaves paid as tribute
by conquered tribes; and it took a vast supply. Sometimes as many as
five hundred were sacrificed on one altar on one great day. They were
stretched naked upon the sacrificial stone, and butchered in a manner
too horrible to be described here. Their palpitating hearts were offered
to the idol, and then thrown into the great stone bowl; while the bodies
were kicked down the long stone stairway to the bottom of the great
mound, where they were seized upon by the eager crowd. The Mexicans were
not cannibals regularly and as a matter of taste; but they devoured
these bodies as part of their grim religion.

It is too revolting to go more into detail concerning these rites.
Enough has been said to give some idea of the moral barrier encountered
by the Spanish missionaries when they came to such blood-thirsty savages
with a gospel which teaches love and the universal brotherhood of man.
Such a creed was as unintelligible to the Indian as white blackness
would b