China, is said to be very valuable, but seems to me more curious than beautiful. It is a composition of brass and silver. Not a soul was in the sacred precincts this morning, but miserable léperos in rags and blankets, mingled with women in ragged rebosos—at least a sprinkling of ladies with mantillas was so very slight, that I do not think there were half a dozen in all. The floor is so dirty that one kneels with a feeling of horror, and an inward determination to effect as speedy a change of garments afterwards, as possible. Besides, many of my Indian neighbors were engaged in an occupation which I must leave to your imagination; in fact, relieving their heads from the pressure of the colonial system; or rather, eradicating and slaughtering the colonists, who swarm there like the emigrant Irish in the United States. I was not sorry to find myself once more in the pure air after mass; and have since been told that except on peculiar occasions, and at certain hours, few ladies perform their devotions in the cathedral. I shall learn all these particulars in time.
We saw as we passed out, the Aztec Calendar, a round stone covered with hieroglyphics, which is still preserved and fastened on the outside of the cathedral. We afterwards saw the Stone of Sacrifices, now in the court yard of the University, with a hollow in the middle, in which the victim was laid, while six priests, dressed in red, their heads adorned with plumes of green feathers, (they must have looked like macaws) with gold and green ear-rings, and blue stones in their upper lips, held him down, while the chief priest cut open his breast, threw his heart at the
