While it has been strenuously denied that on such occasions human sacrifices were offered in Peru, the Mexicans, that race whose principal instruments were drums and brass trumpets, not only held such sacrifices, but, strange to say, held them in honour of a kind of god of music, Tezcatlipoca.  This festival was the most important in Mexico, and took place at the temple or “teocalli,” a gigantic, pyramid-like mass of stone, rising in terraces to a height of eighty-six feet above the city, and culminating in a small summit platform upon which the long procession of priests and victims could be seen from all parts of the city.  Once a year the sacrifice was given additional importance, for then the most beautiful youth in Mexico was chosen to represent the god himself.  For a year before the sacrifice he was dressed as Tezcatlipoca, in royal robes and white linen, with a helmet-like crown of sea shells with white cocks’ plumes, and with an anklet hung with twenty gold bells as a symbol of his power, and he was married to the most beautiful maiden in Mexico.  The priests taught him to play the flute, and whenever the people heard the sound of it they fell down and worshipped him.

The account may be found in Bancroft’s great work on the “Native Races of the Pacific,” also Sahagun’s “Nueva Espana and Bernal Diaz,” but perhaps the most dramatic description is that by Rowbotham: 

And when the morning of the day of sacrifice arrived, he was taken by water to the Pyramid Temple where he was to be sacrificed, and crowds lined the banks of the river to see him in the barge, sitting in the midst of his beautiful companions.  When the barge touched the shore, he was taken away from those companions of his forever, and was delivered over to a band of priests, exchanging the company of beautiful women for men clothed in black mantles, with long hair matted with blood—­their ears also were mangled.  These conducted him to the steps of the pyramid, and he was driven up amidst a crowd of priests, with drums beating and trumpets blowing.  As he went up he broke an earthen flute on every step to show that his love, and his delights were over.  And when he reached the top, he was sacrificed on an altar of jasper, and the signal that the sacrifice was completed was given to the multitudes below by the rolling of the great sacrificial drum.[04]

[02] Kong.  His disciples called him Fu Tsee, or “the
     master”; Jesuit missionaries Latinized this to Confucius.

[03] The Chinese theatre has been called an unconscious
     parody of our old-fashioned Italian opera, and there
     are certainly many resemblances.  In a Chinese play,
     when the situation becomes tragic, or when one of the
     characters is seized with some strong emotion, it finds
     vent in a kind of aria.  The dialogue is generally given
     in the most monotonous manner possible—­using only