1GB THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. IX. 



was not a great one. Already the cross was an emblem 

 amongst them, and baptism a rite ; and the images they 

 were called upon to adore did not differ so greatly from 

 those they had worshipped before. They easily conformed 

 to the new faith. D'Avila is said to have overthrown 

 the idols at Bivas, and to have baptised nine thousand 

 Indians. Then the Spaniards, having Christianised the 

 Indians, made slaves of them, and ground them to the 

 dust with merciless cruelties and overwork, which quickly 

 depopulated whole towns and districts. 



The presence of the cross in central America greatly 

 astonished the Spanish discoverers. In Yucatan it was 

 the emblem of the "god of rain." There has been 

 much speculation by various authors respecting its origin, 

 as a religious emblem, in Mexico and central America; and 

 it has even been supposed that some of the early 

 Icelandic Christians of the ninth century may have 

 reached the coast of Mexico, and introduced some know- 

 ledge of the Christian religion. But the cross was a 

 religious emblem of the greatest antiquity, both in Syria 

 and Egypt, and baptism was a pre-Christian rite; and 

 these and other observances, such as auricular confession 

 and monastic institutions, were so mixed up with the 

 worship of a great number of gods, at the head of which 

 was the worship of the sun, and were associated with such 

 horrid human sacrifices and pagan ceremonials, that it 

 is more likely that they acquired the cross, with other 

 pagan traditions handed down to them from a remote 

 antiquity, from the common stock from whence both the 

 inhabitants of the Eastern and Western hemispheres 

 were descended. There is good evidence for supposing 

 that young children were offered up in sacrifice to Tkaloc, 



