that numbers of stone flakes and cores are found in the mortar of the constructed buildings, and it is possible that these may have been used in the final dressing of the stone on the spot. In one of the buildings a fresco in red and white has been discovered on the cornice. This is in a style rather resembling certain Oaxacan and Cholulan pottery, and bears also an analogy to certain frescoes in British Honduras (compare Figs. 79 and 80; pp. 335 and 336). Various mythological figures are represented, including Mixcoatl (Fig. 35) and his double-headed deer, and it would seem probable that they have been added at a date considerably later than the construction of the buildings. Of the use of the buildings Burgoa gives particulars, assigning one group to the king, another to the priests, and so forth. But as he speaks of upper storeys, of which no traces are apparent, his account can hardly be considered sufficiently trustworthy to be given in detail. The same author writes also of extensive subterranean chambers, but with the exception of two cruciform souterrains of comparatively small dimensions, nothing of that nature has yet been discovered. [Illustration: Fig. 35.--Portion of a fresco at Mitla; figure of the god Mixcoatl. (_After Seler_)] The quadrangular grouping of buildings round courts recalls at once the statement of Sahagun respecting the pre-Aztec temples at Tulan. One of these, he writes, was composed of four buildings, that to the east being ornamented with gold, that to the north with red jasper and red shells, that to the west with turquoise, and that to the south with silver and white shells. The other temple was similar, save that the interior decoration of the buildings was of feathers, yellow, red, blue and white respectively. If the tradition is founded on fact, we may safely conclude that the buildings were arranged round a court, and the colours of their ornamentation suggest that this arrangement was connected with the regard paid by the Mexicans generally to the world-directions (see p. 78).