Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/143

 106 The last figures represent flageolets, made, like the whistles, of baked clay. They have four stops, and the sound is, of course, very monotonous. I have seen them used, even at the present day, in some religious ceremonials of the Indians, as an accompaniment to a drum which, though not shaped like the teponaxth, produced quite as little music.

Around the walls of this chamber of the Museum are hung old Indian paintings of portions of Mexican history; genealogies of the Mexican monarchs; computations of time; plans of the city before the conquest, and pictures of various battles and skirmishes that occurred between the natives and the invaders. I regret to say that many of these are only copies, the originals having been taken to England shortly after the establishment of Independence, whence they have never been returned. They are placed better there, perhaps, than they would be in Mexico; where the existing remains of antiquity excite no curiosity, and lie, from year to year, covered with dust, and unexplored on the walls and in the closets of a university. With the exception of Don Carlos Bustamante, I know no one who has devoted an hour, of late years, to these interesting studies; and the curator of the Museum, Don Isidrio Gondra, is so continually occupied with his political duties, in the editing of the Government Gazette, and lacks so greatly the encouragement of the Government, and its dedication of even a thousand dollars a year to archaeological researches, that he does no more than open the doors of these saloons on stated days and smoke his cigar quietly in a corner; while the ladies, gentlemen, loafers and léperos, wander from case to case, and lift up their hands in astonishment at the grotesque forms.

What those forms and figures mean; what was represented by such an idol, or what by another—receives the unfailing Mexican answer: "Quien sabe?"—"who knows? who can tell?" But I must not leave this building, without some remarks on a vase, of which the sketch of the next page is an accurate drawing, representing both its sides.