according to the carved indications upon the surface. Engraved
upon it were the Great Plan and its laws of organization and rotation. It
clearly determined, once and for all, the sequence of the days; the
relation of all classes of the population to each other and to the whole,
and set forth not only the place each group should occupy in the
market-place, but also the product or industry with which it was
associated and the periods when its contributions to the commonwealth
should be forthcoming in regular rotation. The stone was therefore not
only the tablet but the wheel of the law of the State and it can be
conjectured that its full interpretation was more or less beyond the
capacity of all but an initiated minority, consisting of the elders,
chiefs and priests.

Postponing for the present further discussion of this, the most precious
and remarkable monument which has ever been unearthed on the American
Continent, let us briefly bestow attention upon the two other monoliths
which may be said to be its companions and obviously belong to the same
period and civilization. In 1886, in the preliminary note cited above, I
advanced the view that the first of these, generally known as the
"Sacrificial stone," was a "law-stone of a similar nature [to the
Calendar-stone] which recorded, however, the periodical collection of
certain tributes paid by subjugated tribes and others whose obligation it
was to contribute to the commonwealth of Mexico." I pointed out that the
"frieze around the stone consists of groups, placed at intervals, of the
flint-knives (tecpatl) with conventionally carved teeth (tlantli) giving
in combination the word 'tecpatlantli.' This occurs in Sahagun's Historia,
as the name given to the 'lands of the tecpan or palace,' and in one of
the native works I find designated the four channels into which the
produce of these lands was diverted." I likewise noted that "the periods
indicated on it differ from those on the Calendar-stone," which might more
appropriately be designated as the ancient Mexican wheel of the law or of
the Great Universal Plan.

Thirteen years of painstaking research have only served to strengthen me
in my interpretation of the "Sacrificial-stone." The frieze around it
exhibits sixteen groups, each consisting of the repeated representation of
a warrior characterized by having one foot only. In each case he is
figured as seizing by the hair a different individual, who bows his head
and of