Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/342

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330
ANCIENT AZTEC RELICS.

when the latter was defeated at Zacatacas. Then, the whole United States runs: with lamentations and denunciations of "this act of barbarism," on his part. Maximilian was hunted down and brought to the Cerro de Las Campanas, to receive the punishment due to a filibuster, robber, and murderer of prisoners of war, and the royal sufferer had all our sympathy. Is this impartial justice between man and man?

The business of "finding" Aztec relics, pottery, etc., etc., is carried on here and in the vicinity quite extensively, and there is good reason to suppose that many of the articles thus brought to light from time to time, are veritable relics of that ancient race. I am indebted to Señor Miron of Vera Cruz, for some recently dug up at Medalin, which are undoubtedly genuine. On the other hand, many articles of pottery in the form of hideous, half-human, half: brute monstrosities, which I have had offered me as relics recently exhumed from the ancient burial mounds and ruined temples, I am satisfied had not been buried a year, and I would not pay the freight on them to San Francisco if they were given to me.

All around the Lakes of Mexico there are traces of ancient potteries, and I noticed that the bits of broken red earthenware scattered about them, are identical, in composition and color, with those I have picked up in "the valley of the Mississippi, and supposed to be relics of the ancient mound-builders. Among the veritable relics of the Aztecs over the authenticity of which there can be no question, may be mentioned the great Aztec calendar, cut on the face of an irregular block of lava from Popocatépetl, some twelve feet in height by ten in breadth, which has been