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 high throat and head tones, occasionally lowering or raising the voice on a word, to express emotion. This monotonous, and to European ears, strangely nonchalant, nasal recitative, is being continually interrupted by gong pounding and the shrill, high sound of discordant reed instruments. When one or more of the characters commits suicide (which as we know is an honoured custom in China) he sings--or rather whines--a long chant before he dies, just as his western operatic colleagues do, as, for instance, Edgar in "Lucia di Lammermoor" and even, to come nearer home, Siegfried in "Goetterdaemmerung." [04] This drum was made of serpents' skins, and the sound of it was so loud that it could be heard eight miles away. VI THE MUSIC OF GREECE