Note 46 — Chapter IV · PALACES AND HOUSEHOLDS OF THE NAHUA KINGS.

There is a singular confusion about this passage. In Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 252, Ixtlilxochitl is made to write: 'Un poquito mas abajo estaban tres albercas de agua, y en la del medio estaban en sus bordos tres damas esculpidas y labradas en la misma peña, que significaban la gran laguna; y las ranas los cabezas del imperio.' In Prescott's Mex., App., vol. iii., pp. 430-2, Ixtlilxochitl's description of Tezcozinco is given in full; the above-quoted passage is exactly the same here except that for ranas, frogs, we read ramas, branches. Either of these words would render the description incomprehensible, and in my description I have assumed that they are both misprints for damas. Mr Prescott, Mex., vol. i., pp. 182-3, surmounts the difficulty as follows: 'On a lower level were three other reservoirs, in each of which stood a marble statue of a woman, emblematic of the three states of the empire.' This is inaccurate as well as incomplete, inasmuch as the figures were not statues, each standing in a basin, but were all three cut upon the face of the rock-border of the middle basin.