152 GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 



a way from beloWj and ruslied into the temple am.ong tliem 

 with liis Tigers. Many he slew outright, but the bodies of 

 the guiltiest he hewed and hacked, and throwing red pepper 

 on their wounds, left them to die. 



After this there conies another story. Quetzalcohuatl ap- 

 peared at Fanuco, up a river on the Eastern Coast. He had 

 landed there from his ship, coming no man knew from whence. 

 He was tall, of white complexion, pleasant to look upon, with 

 fair hair and bushy beard, dressed in long iiowing robes. Re- 

 ceived everywhere as a messenger from heaven, he travelled 

 inland across the hot countries of the coast to the temperate 

 regions of the interior, and there he became a priest, a law- 

 giver, and a king. The beautiful land of the Toltecs teemed 

 with fruit and flowers, and his reign was their Golden Age. 

 Poverty was unknown, and the people revelled in every joy of 

 riches and well-being. The Toltecs themselves were not like 

 the small dark Aztecs of later times ; they were large of sta- 

 ture and fair almost as Europeans, and (sun-like) they could 

 run unresting all the long day. Quetzalcohuatl brought with 

 him builders, painters, astronomers, and artists in many other 

 crafts. He made roads for travel, and favoured the wayfaring 

 merchants from distant lands. He was the founder of history, 

 the lawgiver, the inventor of the calendar of days and years, 

 the composer of the Tonalamatl, the " Sun-Book," where the 

 Tonalpouhqui, " he who counts by the sun," read the destinies 

 of men in astrological predictions, and he regulated the times 

 of the solemn ceremonies, the festival of the new year and of 

 the fifty-two years^ cycle. But after a reign of years of peace 

 and prosperity, trouble came upon him too. His enemies 

 banded themselves against him, and their head was a chief 

 who bore a name of the Sun, Tetzcatlipoca, the " Smoking 

 Mirror," a splendid youth, a kinsman of Quetzalcohuatl, but 

 his bitter enemy. They rose against Quetzalcohuatl, and he 

 departed. The kingdom, he said, was no longer under his 

 charge, he had a mission elsewhere, for the master of distant 

 lands had sent to seek him, and this master was the Sun. He 

 went to CholuUan, " the place of the fugitive," and founded 

 .there another empire, but his enemy followed him with his 



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