recarious independence. The subject peoples
were only kept from open rebellion by the most rigorous and oppressive
measures. There was jealousy, humiliation, hoped-for revenge
throughout the entire empire.

Each tribe or people had its own local god, but there was a bond
coherent in the general Mexican religion that had its centre of worship
in the great city, and which all of them followed. This religion was
one of the most ferocious, degrading and disgusting of any in history.
It required human sacrifice on a larger scale than had ever before been
practised. Cannibalism was universal. Captives of war were sacrificed
to the gods and their bodies eaten. In Mexico, {127} itself, with all
its charm, with all its beauty, with all its luxuries, with all its
verdure and wealth, there were huge pyramids of skulls. The priests
were ferocious creatures, whose long black locks, never combed, were
matted with blood, as they sacrificed to their awful war-god human
hearts, still palpitating, torn from the victims a moment since alive.
Fiske thus describes the temple pyramid and chief shrine in the great
city:

"On the summit was a dreadful block of jasper, convex at the top, so
that when the human victim was laid upon his back and held down, the
breast was pushed upwards, ready for the priest to make one deep
slashing cut and snatch out the heart. Near the sacrificial block were
the altars, and sanctuaries of the gods, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli,
and others, with idols as hideous as their names. On these altars
smoked fresh human hearts, of which the gods were fond, while other
parts of the bodies were ready for the kitchens of the communal houses
below. The gods were voracious as wolves, and the victims as numerous.
In some cases the heart was thrust into the mouth of the idol with a
golden spoon, in others the lips were simply daubed with blood. In the
temple a great quantity of rattlesnakes, kept as sacred objects were
fed with the entrails of the victims. Other parts of the body were
given to the menagerie beasts, which were probably also kept for
purposes of religious symbolism. Blood was also rubbed into the mouths
of the carved serpents upon the jambs and lintels of the houses. The
walls and floor of the great temple were clotted with blood and shreds
of human flesh, and the smell was like that of a slaughter-house. Just
outside the temple, in front of the broad street which {128} led across
the causeway