70 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



unseen world, tlie Mexicans had recourse to sacrifices, in this differing in no way 

 from Aryans, Semites, Negroes, and all other races. But their sanguinary rites 

 probably surpassed in horror those even of Dahomey itself. Even the most timid 

 practised self-torture like the fakirs of the East and the Aïssawas of Algeria ; 

 they scarified their flesh with the cruel maguey thorn ; they prolonged their 

 fastings for days together ; they abstained from sleep till the mind wandered. 



The Benedictine friar, Camillo de Monserrate, explained the dento-liquid sounds 

 il, eti, which seem so strange to most European ears, by the Mexican habit of 

 piercing the tongue with large cactus thorns during their fits of religious frenzy ; 

 thus he supposed might have been produced a sort of stammering which became 

 hereditary in the course of ages. 



But it was mainly by proxy that they sought to conjure the caprice of the 

 gods ; the stain of sin was vicariously cleansed by immolating alien victims. In 

 the Old World, which abounds in animals of all kinds, their blood was usually 

 regarded as sufficiently efficacious. But on the Mexican plateaux there was little 

 excejjt men to torture and mangle in honour of the jealous deities. Human hearts 

 were torn from the still-warm breast by the gory hands of priests, and held up 

 towards the invisible spirits. To Tlaloc were immolated sucklings or children 

 killed with fright, and their flesh was then consumed by the nobles at a religious 

 banquet. The necropolis of Tenenepanco, discovered by Charnay, at an altitude of 

 over 13,000 feet, on the northern slopes of Popocatepetl, contained nothing but the 

 remains of hundreds of children, probably the victims offered to Tlaloc, god of the 

 lofty heights, whence descend the winds and the clouds. 



At the great ceremonies, blood was shed in torrents to flood the trenches dug 

 round the teocaUi, that is, the temples, literally " God's house." Towards the 

 close of the fifteenth century, at the consecration of the great temple of Mexico to 

 Huitziloputzli, the war-god, which had been begun by his predecessor Tizoc, King 

 Ahuizotl immolated nearly eighty thousand captives. But despite the statement 

 of the chronicles, this tremendous butchery must have been made, not on one 

 occasion, but at numerous successive ceremonies, as has been shown by Charnay. 



Each sovereign, on ascending the throne, had to begin his reign by a vast 

 man-hunting expedition, in order to provide food for all the sacred shambles ; 

 each of the eighteen months of the year had to be blessed by a massacre. Accord- 

 ingly " holy wars " had been formerly established by treaty between the various 

 states in order to secure sufficient victims for the altars. 



Every temple washed its foundations in the blood of captives mingled with 

 offerings of the precious metals, of pearls and the seeds of all useful plants. These 

 temples, stained with black gore, full of human flesh, fresh, charred or decomposed, 

 presented a ghastly spectacle ; some were entered through a door in the form of a 

 throat, in which thousands of skulls lined the jaws of the monster. Close by rose 

 pyramids, "each containing over a hundred thousand skulls." 



One of the yearly feasts was that of the " flaying," when the priests traversed the 

 various quarters of the city clad in the dripping skins of the victims. But the 

 very multitude of the offerings rendered the gods insatiable, and their wretched 



