Don Solis would not enter into a detail of their particular festivals and sacrifices, their ceremonies, sorceries, and superstitions; not only because they are met at every step, with tedious repetitions, in the histories, but because it is his opinion that too much caution cannot be observed in restricting the pen upon a subject of this nature; at best to be looked upon as an unnecessary lesson, affording the reader little pleasure and much less profit. With all due deference to the erudition and moral feelings of the author above, so largely quoted, I doubt whether information of consequence might not be obtained from the minutiæ of these ceremonies, trifling as they appear, that would be of importance to the future historian. If the exploits of these nations had been handed down even in the writings of those “capable historiographers,” it would have been some consolation for the absence of any better authority.[18] The suppression of these records we cannot pardon—the natives erred through ignorance; their conquerors, from a policy only worthy of the darkest ages. They not only destroyed what they confess to be a wise and excellent government, but they buried in oblivion the very name of the people they so mercilessly obliterated from a national (it may almost be said from an earthly) existence. Waldeck, in referring back to the time that Cortez was in Tabasco, gives an account of a sick horse left with the Indians by that almost worshipped commander; which, under the rich and unnatural food they furnished him, very naturally famished. Some say he was fed with grains of gold; the natives judging, from the prevailing passion of his former masters, that this would be his most satisfactory diet. He died, poor horse, however, as might have been anticipated, under their unfortunate attentions; but the consequences did not end here. They erected an elegant temple to his memory, deified him, and placed him among the most prominent of their gods, where he received their faithful and regular devotions. In after years, the missionaries and Spanish priests had more difficulty to dissuade them from the worship of this horse, which they called Tizimin,[19] than they had from all their other gods. From this circumstance, it appears that this temple must have been built after the conquest; and, as it possesses architectural beauty in no respect inferior to the temples of a more ancient date, we may infer that the same race of people that produced it, may have been the architects of the most elaborate works among the ruins.[20]