Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/109

Rh "We know that in the most remote times they represented the Godhead under the symbol of the mastodon-head. Notwithstanding their great respect for the memory of their ancestors, so strongly inculcated that even to-day they would not fail to prepare the hanal pixan—the food of the souls—and offer it in peculiar places on All-Saints' day, in after ages this emblem—the mastodon-head—became replaced by that of the winged serpent, Kukulcan, or Ahi, even in the city of the holy and wise men, the Itzaes; whilst in Uxmal and other places, where in time the Nahautl religion prevailed, the phallic emblems were coupled with those of the sun, the fire, and the mastodon-head.

"The monuments of these people also show the changes which have taken place in the architectural taste in consequence of alteration in the customs and in the ideas and in the mode of life of the people, caused perhaps by immigrations and invasions,—probably by commercial intercourse and frequent communication by sea and land with the neighboring nations. The ornamentation of the edifices also tells us of the progress of the artists in drawing and sculpture.

"The great mound of Mayapan, which reveals such perfect mathematical symmetry in all its parts, shows that the Maya architects were as well acquainted with the rules of trigonometry as their friends the astronomers. It will call to mind that oldest structure of the plains of Chaldea,—the graduated towers so characteristic of Babylonia, of which the oldest type known in history is the tower of Babel,—and on its top the priests of the Mayas, as the Magi, elevated above the mists of the plain below, could track through the cloudless sky the movements of the stars; instead of cutting out there the hearts of human victims, as a celebrated author suggests. . ..

"This mound, now very dilapidated, is an oblong, truncated pyramid, measuring on the north and west sides at the base thirty-two metres, and fourteen metres on top; on the east and west sides at the base twenty-seven metres, and ten metres on top. On the four faces stairways are cut of sixty steps, each twenty-five centimetres high; it appears as if composed of seven superposed platforms, all of the same height,—one metre seventy centimetres,—each one being smaller than the one immediately below. Throughout Yucatan seven seems to have been the mystic number, as among other ancient nations. In the plains of Babylon there were no stones, and the builders of the 'temple of the seven lights' made the core of the structure with sun-dried clay, and the facings with hard burnt bricks. In Yucatan, where there is no clay, but stones, the core