The Aztec drums, which are still to be seen, are altogether of wood, nearly cylindrical, but swelling out in the middle, and hollowed out of solid logs.  Some have the sounding-board made unequally thick in different parts, so as to give several notes when struck.  All are elaborately carved over with various designs, such as faces, head-dresses, weapons, suns with rays, and fanciful patterns, among which the twisted cord is one of the commonest.

Besides the drums which are preserved in museums, there are others, carefully kept in Indian villages, not as curiosities, but as instruments of magical power.  Heller mentions such a teponaztli, which is still preserved among the Indians of Huatusco, an Indian village near Mirador in the tierra templada, where the inhabitants have had their customs comparatively little altered by intercourse with white men.  They keep this drum as a sacred instrument, and beat it only at certain times of the year, though they have no reason to give for doing so.  It is to be regretted that Heller did not take a note of the particular days on which this took place; for the times of the Mexican festivals are well known, and this information would have settled the question whether the Indians of the present day have really any definite recollection of their old customs.

Drums of this kind do not belong exclusively to Mexico.  Among all the tribes of North America they were one of the principal “properties” used by the Medicine-men in their ceremonies; and among the tribes which have not been christianized they are still to be found in use.  After we left Mexico, Mr. Christy visited some tribes in the Hudson’s Bay Territory; and on one occasion, happening to assist at a festival in which just such a wooden drum was used, he bought it of the Medicine-man of the tribe, and packed it off triumphantly to his museum.

A few picture-writings are still to be seen in the Museum, which, with the few preserved in Europe, are all we have left of these interesting records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and Tezcuco.  Some were burnt or destroyed during the sieges of the cities, some perished by mere neglect, but the great mass was destroyed by archbishop Zumarraga, when he made an attempt—­and, to some extent, a successful one—­to obliterate every trace of heathenism, by destroying all the monuments and records in the country.  One of the picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived white men, their ships and horses, and their cannons with fire and smoke issuing from their mouths.  Another shows a white man being sacrificed, of course one of the Spanish prisoners.  The pictorial history of the migration of the Aztecs is here, and a list of tributes paid to the Mexican sovereign; the different articles being drawn with numbers against each, to show the quantities to be paid, as in the Egyptian inscriptions.  Lord Kingsborough’s great work contains fac-similes of several Mexican manuscripts, and in Humboldt’s Vues des Cordilleres some of the most remarkable are figured and described.