As our slabs are far more archaic than those at Palenque, we think we are justified in calling them earlier in time—the parent samples of the later ones. Nor is our assumption unsupported, for we shall subsequently find that the cult of Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl was carried by the Toltecs in their distant peregrinations. These slabs, therefore, and the pillars we found in the village, acquire a paramount importance in establishing the affiliation of Toltec settlements in Tabasco, Yucatan, and other places, furnishing us with further data in regard to certain monuments at Palenque, the steles of Tikal, and the massive monolith idols of Copan.
I next attacked the terraced court fronting the palace towards the Path of Death, and the amount of constructions and substructures we came upon is almost beyond belief: inclined stuccoed walls crossing each other in all directions, flights of steps leading to terraces within the pyramid, ornaments, pottery, and detritus; so much so that the pyramid might not improperly be called a necropolis, in which the living had their dwellings.
In a word, our campaign at Teotihuacan was as successful as our campaign at Tula. We were attended by the same good fortune, and the reader whom such things may interest will find a bas-relief of both Toltec palaces, and of one of the tombstones, in the Trocadéro. The other I offered, as in duty bound, to the Mexican Government, which allowed it to remain in the village for eighteen months, when Mr. Cumplido, the editor of the Nineteenth Century, had it brought to Mexico, and sold it to the Museum for £10.
From what has been said it will be seen that the monuments at Teotihuacan were partly standing at the time of the Conquest.
Our next investigations will take us to the Sierra.
TOLTEC SEPULCHRAL STONE, TEOTIHUACAN.
