Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/126

, and odd, indeed, is the jumble of fragments of the past and present that bursts upon your view.

In the centre of the room is a Castle and Fortification, made of wood and straw, with mimic guns and all the array of military power. This was the work of a poor prisoner—the labor of years of solitude and misery.

To the left is a numismatic cabinet, tolerably rich in Spanish specimens and in a collection of Roman coins, which promises, under the care of Mr. Gondra, to become exceedingly rare and valuable. Next, there is a small library of manuscripts of the early missionaries in Mexico; volumes of their sermons, poems, and records of marriages, births and baptisms soon after the conquest. It is astonishing to see how many took the name of Hernando Cortez. Next to this, again, is another case containing (among all sorts of antiquated gimcrackery,) some beautiful specimens of the rag and wax-work, which I described in a former letter. In a corner hard by, covered with dust, lie the original drawings of Palenque and the volumes of Lord Kingsborough's Mexico, presented to this Museum by that munificent antiquarian. They are rarely looked at, except by some foreign traveller who happens to straggle into the Museum.

The rest of the collection is valuable. In the adjoining cases are all the smaller Mexican Antiquities, which have been gathered together by the labor of many years, and arranged with some attention to system. In one department you find the hatchets used by the Indians; the ornaments of beads of obsidian and stone worn round their necks; the mirrors of obsidian; the masks of the same material, which they hung at different seasons before the faces of their idols; their bows and arrows and arrow-heads of obsidian, some of them so small and beautifully cut, that the smallest bird might be killed without injuring the plumage.

In another department are the of the ancient Indians, in clay and stone, specimens of which, together with the small  and vases for burning incense, are exhibited in the following drawings: