In the papers of Father Bias Valera I found what follows, which I have taken the trouble to translate and insert in this place, because it is apposite to the point we have been discussing, and because of the value of the observations made by this authority. Speaking of the sacrifices which the Indians of Mexico offered up, and of those in other countries, and of the gods they worshipped, he says as follows:—

“One cannot explain in words, nor imagine without horror and dismay, how contrary to religion, terrible, cruel, and inhuman were the sacrifices which the Indians were accustomed to offer up in the time of their heathenry, nor the multitude of gods they had, insomuch that in the city of Mexico and its suburbs there were more than two thousand. The general name for their gods and idols was Teutl, though each one had a particular name. But that which Pedro Martyr, the Bishop of Chiapas, and others affirm, that the Indians of the island of Cucumela, subject to the province of Yucatan, had for their God the sign of the cross, and that they worshipped it; and that the natives of Chiapa knew of the most Holy Trinity and of the incarnation of our Lord; these were interpretations which those authors and other Spaniards invented out of their imaginations, and then applied to those mysteries. In the same way, in their histories of Cuzco, they referred the three statues of the sun to a belief in the Trinity, as well as those to thunder, lightning, and thunderbolts.