40 Singing Valleys 



variously ''Seven Snakes" or "Seven Maize Ears" (one of the 

 aspects of Coatlicue), the crowds poured. For it was harvest 

 time, when thanks were due Chicomene Coatl for her gifts, 

 and before she was supposed to leave her children for a visit 

 to the magic isle of Tlalocan in the west, where, according to 

 Aztec belief, the maize-god was born. 

 The crowds on the temple steps chanted the harvest hymn: 



Goddess of the seven ears, arise, awake, 

 For, our mother, thou leavest us. 

 Thou returnest to Tlalocan. 



Arise, awake, 



Mother, thou leavest us now. 

 Thou goest to thy home in Tlalocan. 



All day long, and through many days, the golden tide poured 

 into the city. The Spaniards watched and wondered. Here was 

 no poverty such as crept through the dark lanes of Toledo and 

 Seville; no hunger, no threat of famine. They saw the maize 

 mount in the Montezuma's treasury, and in the granaries of 

 the temples. They heard, as Sahagun tells, the songs of the 

 corn-bearers: 



Oh, the yellow blossom has flowered, 



She, our mother, 



With the thigh-skin of the goddess 



Painted upon her face. . . . 



She has come out, come out from Tlalocan, 



The white blossom has burst open. . . . 



Yet this great empire with its magnificent cities, its exten- 

 sive agriculture, its stores of food, fell to a small band of 

 Spaniards who were thousands of miles away from their base 

 of supplies, aliens in a strange land. 



It has been said that it was not the Spaniards but their 

 horses that conquered Mexico. Actually, the destroyer of the 

 Aztecs was neither of these. It was nothing that came in the 

 Spanish caravels. The peoples of Mexico were conquered by 

 the goddess whom they had served so long and so devotedly. 



