Above these bas-reliefs is a frieze between three and four feet high, with another sculptured panel repeated eight times on each side of the pyramid.  This remarkable sculpture represents a man sitting barefoot and crosslegged.  On his head is a kind of crown or helmet, with a plume of feathers; and from the front of this helmet there protrudes a serpent, just where in the Egyptian sculptures the royal basilisk is fixed on the crowns of kings and queens.  The eyes of this personage are protected by round plates with holes in the middle, held on by a strap round the head, like the coloured glasses used in the United States to keep off the glare of the sun, and known as “goggles.”  In front of this figure are sculptured a rabbit and some unintelligible ornaments or weapons.  “Rabbit” may have been his name.

The frieze is surmounted by a cornice; and above the cornice of the second storey enough remains to show that it was covered with reliefs, in the same way as the first There were five storeys originally:  the others have only been destroyed about a century.  The former proprietor of the hacienda of Temisco pulled down the upper storeys, and carried away the blocks of stone to build walls and dams with.

The perfect execution of the details in the bas-reliefs and the accuracy with which they are repeated show clearly that it was not so much want of skill as the necessity of keeping to the conventional mode of representing objects that has given so grotesque a character to the Mexican scriptures.  Certain figures became associated with religion and astrology in Mexico, as in many other countries; and the sculptor, though his facility in details shows that he could have made far better figures if he had had a chance, never had the opportunity, for he was not allowed to depart from the original rude type of the sacred object.  Humboldt remarks that the same undeviating reproduction of fixed models is as striking in the Mexican sculptures done since the Conquest.  The clumsy outlines of the rude figures of saints brought from Europe in the 16th century were adopted as models by the native sculptors, and have lasted without change to this day.

It is evident that Xochicalco answered several purposes.  It was a fortified hill of great strength, also a sacred shrine, and a burial-place for men of note, whose bodies, no doubt, still lie under the ruined cairns near the pyramid.  The magnitude of the ditch and the terraces, as well as the great size of the blocks of stone brought up the hill without the aid of beasts of burden, indicate a large population and a despotic government.  The beauty of the masonry and sculpture show that the people who erected this monument had made no small progress in the arts.  We must remember, too, that they had no iron, but laboriously cut and polished the hardest granite and porphyry with instruments of stone and bronze; we can hardly tell how.