ised his head to glance at the wall opposite him. The
interior of the estufa appeared quite different from what it did on the
day when Shyuote's peep into it was so poorly rewarded. Its walls had
been whitened, and were in addition covered with strange-looking
paintings. The floor was partly occupied by a remarkable display of
equally strange objects.

The painting in front of which the old man sat, and at which he gazed
from time to time, represented in the first place a green disk
surrounded by short red rays, which three white squares, bordered with
black, converted into something like the rude semblance of a human face.
This disk stood for a picture of the sun. Below it was the symbol of the
moon's white disk, encircled by a black and red ring, and provided also
with square eyes and mouth. Still lower were painted two crosses, a red
one and a white one, both with black border.

Above the sun there appeared a form intended to be human, painted in
very gaudy colours. This was P[=a]yatyama, the sun-father. On each side
of him rose a terraced pyramid painted green, and from the top of one of
these pyramids to that of the other there spanned or stretched a
tri-coloured arch, red, yellow, and blue, over the sun-father's head. On
each side of sun and moon was the crudely executed picture of an
animal,--the one on the right, being intended for a bear, painted green;
the one on the left, for a panther, painted red. The heads of these
beasts were turned toward the central figures. Still farther, beyond
these beasts of prey, two gigantic green serpents with horned heads
swept over the remainder of the wall, leaving but a narrow space facing
the sun, where four maize-plants, two green ones and two of a
reddish-brown hue, were painted.

Below the central figures and not quite reaching up to them, an arch of
wood, painted green with a yellow middle stripe, was held aloft by two
poles driven into the floor of the estufa. Under this arch stood a
wooden screen, green and black with a yellow border at the bottom, while
the upper edge was carved into four terraced pyramids surmounted by as
many black arches. Both right and left of the screen, pine-branches
resembling Christmas-trees of to-day were stuck into the floor. This
strange decoration expresses symbolically a meaning similar to that
intended to be conveyed by the dance of the ayash tyucotz.

The sun-father, soaring above the sun, moon, and stars,--for the red
cross is the