Leaving my men under the direction of Colonel Castro, I return to the “Path of Death,” composed of a great number of small mounds, Tlateles, the tombs of great men. They are arranged symmetrically in avenues terminating at the sides of the great pyramids, on a plain of some 620 feet to 975 feet in length; fronting them are cemented steps, which must have been used as seats by the spectators during funeral ceremonies or public festivities. On the left, amidst a mass of ruins, are broken pillars, said to have belonged to a temple; the huge capitals have some traces of sculpture. Next comes a quadrangular block, of which a cast is to be found in the main gallery of the Trocadéro.
In the course of my excavations I had found now and again numerous pieces of worked obsidian, precious stones, beads, etc., within the circuit of ants’ nests, which these busy insects had extracted from the ground in digging their galleries; and now on the summit of the lesser pyramid I again came upon my friends, and among the things I picked out of their nests was a perfect earring of obsidian, very small and as thin as a sheet of paper. It is not so curious as it seems at first, for we are disturbing a ground formed by fifty generations.
Glass does not seem to have been known to the Indians, for although Tezcatlipoca was often figured with a pair of spectacles, they may only have been figurative ones like those of the manuscripts, terra-cotta, or bassi-rilievi, for there is nothing to show that they had any idea of optics.
I now went back to my men, when to my great delight I found they had unearthed two large slabs showing the entrance of two sepulchres; they were the first I had yet found, and considering them very important, I immediately telegraphed to Messrs. Chavero and Berra, both of whom are particularly interested in American archæology. I expected to see them come by the very next train, to view not only the tombstones, but also the palace, which attracted a great number of visitors; but to my surprise one sent word that he had a headache, whilst the other pleaded a less poetic ailment. Ab uno disce omnes; most American writers speak of ancient monuments from hearsay—from foreign travelers who have visited them—they never having taken the trouble to travel any distance to see them.
One of the slabs closed a vault, and the other a cave with perpendicular walls; we went down the former by a flight of steps in fairly good condition, yet it was a long and rather dangerous affair, for we were first obliged to demolish a wall facing us, in which we found a skull, before we could get to the room which contained the tombs. The vases within them are exactly like those we found in the plaza, except that one is filled with a fatty substance—like burnt flesh—mixed with some kind of stuff, the woof of which is still discernible, besides beads of serpentine, bones of dogs and squirrels, knives of obsidian twisted by the action of fire. We know from Sahagun that the dead were buried with their clothes and their dogs to guide and defend them in their long journey: “When the dead were ushered into the presence of the king of the nether world, Mictlantecutli, they offered him papers, bundles of sticks, pine-wood and perfumed reeds, together with loosely twisted threads of white and red cotton, a manta, a maxtli, tunics, and shirts. When a woman died her whole wardrobe was carefully put aside, and a portion burnt eighty days after; this operation was repeated on that day twelve months for four years, when everything that had belonged to the deceased was finally consumed. The dead then came out of the first circle to go successively through nine others encompassed by a large river. On its banks were a number of dogs which helped their owners to cross the river; whenever a ghost neared the bank, his dog immediately jumped into the river and swam by his side or carried him to the opposite bank.”[77] It was on this account that Indians had always several small dogs about them.
The speech which was addressed to the dead when laid out previous to being buried is so remarkable as to make one suspect that the author unconsciously added something of his own: “Son, your earthly hardships and sufferings are over. We are but mortal, and it has pleased the Lord to call you to himself. We had the privilege of being intimately acquainted with you; but now you share the abode of the gods, whither we shall all follow, for such is the destiny of man. The place is large enough to receive every one; but although all are bound for the gloomy bourn, none ever return.” Then followed the speech addressed to the nearest kinsman of the dead: “O son, cheer up; eat, drink, and let not your mind be cast down. Against the divine fiat who can contend? This is not of man’s doing; it is the Lord’s. Take comfort to bear up against the evils of daily life; for who is able to add a day, an hour, to his existence? Cheer up, therefore, as becomes a man.”[78]
VOTIVE STONES, TEOTIHUACAN.
But to return to our tombstones. They are both alike, being about five feet high, three feet five inches broad, and six inches and a half thick. The upper side is smooth, the lower has some carving in the shape of a cross, four big tears or drops of water, and a pointed tongue in the centre, which, starting from the bottom of the slab, runs up in a line parallel to the drops.
Knowing how general was the worship of Tlaloc among the Indians, I conjectured this had been a monument to the god of rain, to render him propitious to the dead; a view shared and enlarged upon by Dr. Hamy in a paper read before the Académie des Sciences in November, 1882; and that I should be in accord with the eminent specialist on American antiquities is a circumstance to make me proud. I may add that the carving of this slab is similar to that of the cross on the famous basso-rilievo at Palenque; so that the probability of the two monuments having been erected to the god of rain is much strengthened thereby.