preside.[2] In or near the market place of each town there were walls
erected for the sport. In the centre of these walls was an orifice a
little larger than the ball. The players were divided into two parties,
and the ball having been thrown, each party tried to drive it through or
over the wall. The hand was not used, but only the hip or shoulders.

[Footnote 1: Torquemada gives a long but obscure description of it.
_Monarquia Indiana_, Lib. xiv, cap. xii.]

[Footnote 2: Nieremberg, "De septuaginta et octo partibus maximi templi
Mexicani," in his _Historia Naturae_, Lib. viii, cap. xxii (Antwerpt,
1635). One of these was called "The Ball Court of the Mirror," perhaps
with special reference to this legend. "Trigesima secunda Tezcatlacho,
locus erat ubi ludebatur pilâ ex gumi olli, inter templa." The name is
from _tezcatl_, mirror, _tlachtli_, the game of ball, and locative ending
_co_.]

From the earth the game was transferred to the heavens. As a ball, hit by
a player, strikes the wall and then bounds back again, describing a curve,
so the stars in the northern sky circle around the pole star and return to
the place they left. Hence their movement was called The Ball-play of the
Stars.[1]

[Footnote 1: "_Citlaltlachtli_," from _citlalin_, star, and _tlachtli_,
the game of ball. Alvarado Tezozomoc, _Cronica Mexicana_, cap. lxxxii. The
obscure passage in which Tezozomoc refers to this is ingeniously analyzed
in the _Anales del Museo Nacional_, Tom. ii, p. 388.]

A recent writer asserts that the popular belief of the Aztecs extended the
figure to a greater game than this.[1] The Sun and Moon were huge balls