The fourth month was called Hueitozoztli, or great watch ; because, during this month, not only the priests, but also the nobility, and populace kept watch. They drew blood from their ears, eye-brows, nose, tongue, arms, and thighs, to expiate the faults committed by their senses, and exposed at their doors leaves of the sword-grass, coloured with blood, but with no other intention, probably, than to make ostentation of their penance. In this manner they prepared themselves for the festival of the goddess Centeotl, which was celebrated with sacrifices of human victims and animals, particularly of quails, and with many warlike exercises, which they performed before the temple of this goddess. Little girls carried ears of maize to the temple, and after offering them to that false divinity, carried them to granaries, in order that these ears, thus hallowed, might preserve all the rest of the grain from any destructive insect. This month commenced on the 27th of April.

The fifth month, which began upon the 17th of May, was almost wholly festival. The first, which was one of the four principal festivals of the Mexicans, "was that which they made in honour of their great god Tezcatlipoca. Ten days before it a priest dressed himself in the same habit and badges which distinguished that god, and went out of the temple with a bunch of flowers in his hands, and a little flute of clay which made a very shrill sound. Turning his face first towards the east, and afterwards to the other three principal winds, he sounded the flute loudly, and then taking up a little dust from the earth with his finger, he put it to his mouth and swallowed it. Upon hearing the sound of the flute all kneeled down; criminals were thrown into the utmost terror and consternation, and with tears implored that god to grant a pardon to their transgressions, and hinder them from being discovered and detected; warriors prayed to him for courage and strength against the enemies of the nation, successful victories, and a multitude of prisoners for sacrifices, and all the rest of the people, using the same ceremony of taking up and eating the dust, supplicated with fervour the clemency of the gods. The sound of the little flute was repeated every day until the festival. One day before it, the lords carried a new habit to the idol, which the priests immediately put upon it, and kept the old one as a relique in some repository of the temple; they adorned the idol with particular ensigns of gold and beautiful feathers, and raised up the tapestry, which always covered the entrance of the sanctuary, that the image of their god might be seen and adored by the multitude.

When the day of the festival arrived, the people flocked to the lower area of the temple. Some priests painted black, and dressed in a similar habit with the idols, carried it aloft upon a lit

ter which the youths and virgins of the temple, bound with thick cords of wreaths of crisp maize, and put one of these wreaths round the neck, and a garland on the head of the idol. This cord the emblem of drought, which they desired to prevent, was called Toxcatl, which name was likewise given to the month on account of this ceremony. All the youths and virgins of the temple, as well as the nobles of the court, carried similar wreaths about their necks and in their hands. Then followed a procession through the lower area of the temple, where flowers and odoriferous herbs were scattered: two priests offered incense to the idol, which two others carried upon their shoulders. In the mean while the people kept kneeling, striking their backs with thick knotted cords. When the procession finished, and also their discipline, they carried back the idol to the altar, and made abundant offerings to it of gold, gems, flowers, feathers, animals, and provision which were prepared by the virgins and other women, who ou account of some particular vow, assisted for that day in the service of the temple. These provisions were carried in procession by the same virgins, who were led by a respectable priest, dressed in a strange fantastical habit, and lastly the youths carried them to the habitations of the priests for whom they had been prepared.

Afterwards they made the sacrifice of the victim representing the god Tezcatlipoca. This victim was the handsomest and best shaped youth of all the prisoners. They selected him a year before the festival, and during that whole time he was always dressed in a similar habit with the idol; he was permitted. to go round the city, but always accompanied by a strong guard, and was adored every where, as the living image of that supreme divinity. Twenty days before the festival, this youth married four beautiful girls, and on the five days preceding the festival, they gave him sumptuous entertainments, and allowed him all the pleasures of life. On the day of the festival, they led him with a numerous attendance to the temple of Tezcatlipoca, but before they came there they dismissed his wives. He accompanied the idol in the procession, and when the hour of sacrifice was come, they stretched him upon the altar, and the high-priest with great reverence opened his breast and pulled out his heart. His body was not, like the bodies of other victims, thrown down the stairs, but carried in the arms of the priests and beheaded at the bottom of the temple. His head was strung up in the Tzompantli, among the rest of the skulls of the victims which were sacrificed to Tezcatlipoca, and his legs and arms were dressed and prepared for the tables of the lords. After the sacrifice, a grand dance took place of the collegiate youths and nobles who were present at the festival. At sun-set, the virgins of the temple made a new offering of bread baked with honey. This

god; and this is also the reason why several authors have believed, that the rite of circumcision was established among the Mexicans. But if possible the people of Yucatan and the Totonacas used this rite, it was never practised by the Mexican, or any other nation of the empire.

In the sixth month, which began about the sixth of June, the third festival of the god Tlaloc was celebrated. They strewed the temple in a curious manner, with rushes from the lake of Citlaltepec. The priests who went to fetch them, committed various hostilities upon all passengers whom they met in their way, plundering them of every thing they had about them, and sometimes even stripping them quite naked, and beating them if they made any resistance. With such impunity were these priests, turned assassins, favoured, that they not only robbed the common people, but even carried off the royal tribute from the collectors of them, if they chanced to meet with them, no private persons being allowed to make complaint against them nor the king to punish them for such enormities. On the day of the festival, they all eat a certain kind of gruel which they called Etzalli from which the month took the name of Etzalquatiztli. They carried to the temple a vast quantity of painted paper and elastic gum, with which they besmeared the paper and the cheeks of the idol.

After this ridiculous ceremony, they sacrificed several prisoners who were clothed in habits the same with that of the god Tlaloc, and his companions, and in order to complete the scene of their cruelty, the priests, attended by a great croud of people, went in vessels to a certain place of the lake, where in former times there was a whirlpool, and there sacrificed two children of both sexes, by drowning them, along with the hearts of the prisoners who had been sacrificed at this festival, in order to obtain from their gods the necessary rains for their fields. U Upon this occasion, those ministers of the temple, who, in the course of that year, had neither been negligeut in office, or convicted of some high misdemeanor which was not, however, deserving of capital punishment, were stripped of their priesthood, aud received a chastisement similar to the trick which is practised on seamen the first time they pass the line, but more severe, as by being repeatedly ducked in the water they were at least so exhausted, it became necessary to carry them home to their houses to be recovered.

In the seventh month, which began upon the 26th of June, the festival of Huixtocihuatbl, the goddess of salt, was celebrated. A day before the festival there was a great dance of women, who danced in a circle, joined to each other by strings or cords of different flowers, and wearing garlands of wormwood on their

large stove called Tlexictli On account of this ceremony they called the festival the incensing of Huitzilopochtli. Immediately after followed the dance of the virgins and priests. The virgins dyed their faces, their arms were adorned with red feathers, on their heads they wore garlands of crisp leaves of maize, and in their hands they bore canes which were cleft, with little flags of cotton or paper in them. The faces of the priests were dyed black, their foreheads bound with little shields of paper, and their lips daubed with honey, they covered their natural parts with paper, and each held a sceptre, at the extremity of which was a flower made of feathers, and above that another tuft of feathers. Upon the edge of the stove two men danced, bearing on their backs certain cages of pine. The priests in the course of their dancing, from time to time, touched the earth with the extremity of their sceptres, as if they rested themselves upon them. All these ceremonies had their particular signification, and the dance on account of the festival at which it took place was called Toxcachocholla. In another separate place, the court and military people danced. The musical instruments which in some dances were placed in the centre, on this occasion were kept without and hid, so that the sound of them was heard but the musicians were unseen.

One year before this festival, the prisoner who was to be sacrificed to Haitzilopochtli, to which prisoner they gave the name of Ixteocale, which signifies, wise lord of heaven, was selected along with the victim for Tezcatlipoca. Both of them rambled about the whole year; with this difference however, that the victim of Tezcatlipoca was adored, but not that of Huitzilopochtl. When the day of the festival was arrived, they dressed the prisoner in a curious habit of painted paper, and put on his head a mitre made of the feathers of an eagle, with a plume upon the top of it. He carried upon his back a small net, and over it a little bag, and in this dress he mingled himself in the dance of a the courtiers. The most singular thing respecting this prisoner was, that although he was doomed to die on that day, yet he had the liberty of fixing the hour of sacrifice himself. Whenever he chose he presented himself to the priests, in whose arms, and not upon the altar, the sacrificer broke his breast, and pulled out his heart. When the sacrifice was ended, the priests began a great dance, which continued all the remainder of the day, excepting some intervals, which they employed to repeat the incense offerings. At this same festival, the priests made a slight cut on the breast and on the belly of all the children of both sexes which were born within one preceding year. This was the sign or character, by which the Mexican nation specially acknowledged itself consecrated to the worship of its protecting