It was with considerable difficulty that I persuaded my _peones_ on one occasion to assist me in the examination of a cave which was said to contain the remains of the dead. The cave had a corkscrew-like opening from the surface of the hill, a barren limestone hog-back in the State of Durango. It descended spirally for some 30 feet or more, as I found when my men lowered me down with a rope, at my command. When my feet touched bottom I lighted the candle, which had been put out in the descent, and looked around. The place was of small extent--little more than a pit--and it seemed to be a natural cavity, with nothing remarkable about it. But I turned my attention to the floor, which felt curiously soft and greasy to the touch. It was strewn with pieces of human bones and skulls! The gruesome place weighed rather upon me, I confess, silent and stifling as it was, but having come to explore I proceeded to excavate lightly in the yielding material of the floor with a light pick. The singular nature of this material aroused my attention, and well it might, for I afterwards learned that there was a legend to the effect that the pit had been the scene of a massacre, and that numbers of persons alive and dead, had been thrown into it, and the soft material was the decayed human remains! When this had taken place no one knew, but it must have been at a very remote or prehistoric period, for during my digging in the floor I unearthed a flint spearhead, beautifully chipped and fashioned, lying by a skull it had cloven. The spearhead, or blade, is some 6 inches in length and 4 inches in width, about a quarter of an inch thick, and I still preserve it. So, as we have seen, religion and superstition are much combined in the mind of the Mexicans, the result of both ancient and modern creeds. As to the antique beliefs and cult, there is much that appeals to the philosopher in the religious structures and history of the prehistoric, semi-civilised peoples of Mexico, or indeed of Spanish-America, whether North or South. The pyramids and temples, which the Toltecs and the Aztecs and the Incas built, have something grand and broad underlying their main idea, the idea of being able to get _on_ their temples rather than _in_ them. There is ever a source of inspiration in being upon the point of an eminence, to commune with Providence, rather than being immured within some gloomy walls, with toppling spires overhead. The spirit ever tries to get _out_, to ascend, and is exalted in accordance with its altitude. Did not Moses at Sinai bring forth the enduring Decalogue from the summit of a great natural pyramid, rather than from the gloomy interior of a temple? The exceedingly numerous pyramids throughout ancient Mexico seem to attest some exalted idea of a natural religion, which found outlet and habitation in the great Teocallis.