The Conversion of the Indians 133 
images, and forced the people to be baptised. The change 
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 
Rivas, 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 and 
throughout the Aztec Empire 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. 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 
knowledge 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. This and other 
observances, such as auricular confession and monasticinstitu- 
tions, 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 Thaloc, the god 
of rain, the very god whose emblem was the cross—a contrast. 
too great to the “ Suffer little children to come unto me ” 
of the loving Saviour, not to make the mind revolt against the 
idea that the cross of the god of rain was derived from the 
cross of the Christian. | 
I see no reason for supposing that the images of El Salto 
were idols, as supposed by the early Spaniards, and still by 
the degenerate half-breeds. They are more likely portrait- 
statues of famous chieftains who led the tribe to many a. 
