Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/287

224 two walled chambers, or sinks, like wells;—one of which has a depth of about fifteen feet, and the other rather less. The walls of the entrance and of the sinks are of the common adobe, and there are no remains either of sculpture, painting, or human bodies, to reward the groper through the dark and dusty adit. I could perceive no sign of an entrance in the "House of the Sun."

It is useless to inquire into the antiquity of these pyramids. There is no authentic tradition of their builders, although they are usually referred to the Toltecs. Clavigero is very brief in his remarks in regard to them, but says that in the temples dedicated to the Sun and Moon, there were two idols of huge bulk carved of stone and covered with gold. The breast of the idol of the Sun was grooved out, and a massive image of the planet, in solid gold, was fixed in the hollow. Of this the conquerors immediately possessed themselves, while the idol was destroyed by order of the Bishop of Mexico, and the fragments remained in the neighborhood until the end of the seventeenth century. A huge globular mass of granite at the spot indicated on the plan by the letter B—measuring nineteen feet and eight inches in circumference—may probably be either part of its ruins, or the sacrificial stone upon whose convex surface thousands have been offered to the gods.

A short distance west of this ball, at the place marked with the letter C, in the middle of the small semicircular elevation of ground and stones (on the top of which are three tumuli with five more on its eastern base) is the curious stone of which the following is an exact design.