FABLE AND FOLKLORE 39 



of royalty; and in both Mexico and Peru, where it was 

 trained for sport in falconry, it was preferred to the 

 puma, which also was taught to capture deer and young 

 peccaries for its master, as is the cheeta in India. Cap- 

 tive harpies are still set to fight dogs and wildcats in 

 village arenas, and rarely are vanquished. 



The tradition is that the Aztecs, a northern Nahuatl 

 tribe, escaping from the tyranny of the dominant Chiche- 

 mecas, moved about A. D. 1325 into the valley of Mexico 

 (Tenochtitlan), and settled upon certain islets in a 

 marshy lake — the site of the subsequent City of Mexico ; 

 and this safe site is said to have been pointed out to 

 them by a sign from their gods — an eagle perched upon 

 a prickly-pear cactus, the nopal, in the act of strangling 

 a serpent. This is the picture Cortez engraved on his 

 Great Seal, and Mexico has kept it to this day. 



Guatemala was a part of ancient Mexico ; and perched 

 on the shield in Guatemala's coat-of-arms is the green or 

 resplendent trogon {Plmromacrus mocinno), the native 

 and antique name of which is quetzal. This is one of 

 the most magnificent of birds, for its crested head and 

 body (somewhat larger than a sparrow's) are iridescent 

 green, the breast and under parts crimson, and the wings 

 black overhung by long, plumy coverts. The quetzal's 

 special ornament, however, is its bluish-green tail, eight 

 or ten inches long, whose gleaming feathers curve down 

 in the graceful sweep of a sabre. It has been called the 

 most beautiful of American birds, and it is peculiar to 

 Central America. 



How this trogon came to be Guatemala's national sym- 

 bol, made familiar, by all its older postage-stamps, is a 

 matter of religious history. One of the gods in the 

 ancient Aztec pantheon was Quetzalcoatl, of whom it was 



