, peopled by barbarians, opened a fresh field to Spanish
missionary zeal, in which the kingdom of God upon earth was to be
extended and countless souls rescued from the obscene idolatries and
debasing cannibalism which enslaved them."

In the Mexican Pantheon, however, there was one good god, named
Quetzalcoatl. He was a Toltec deity, and was venerated as the god of
the air. He was identified with the east wind which brought the
fertilizing rains. Some historians and investigators explain him as
purely a mythical personage. He was supposed to have appeared to the
Toltecs long before the Aztecs came into the land. He was described in
ancient traditions as a tall, white-faced, bearded man, whose dress
differed from that of the aborigines and included a long white tunic,
upon which were dark red crosses. His teachings enjoined chastity,
charity, and penance. He had but one God and preached in the name of
that God. He condemned human sacrifice and taught the nation
agriculture, metal work and {130} mechanics. He fixed their calendar
so that it was much more reliable than either the Greek or the Roman.
There were various legends as to his departure, one of them being that
he sailed away across the sea upon a raft composed of serpents, and was
wafted into the unknown East whence he had come.

His color, his dress, his teachings, and his character, are all so
symbolic of Christianity, they are so strange, so unique, so utterly
without an explanation in anything else known of the Aztecs and
Toltecs, that the conclusion that he was a Christian Bishop, wearing a
pallium is almost irresistible. Why could not some Christian Bishop,
voyaging along the shores of Europe, have been blown far out of his
course by a long-continued easterly gale, finally have landed on the
shores of Mexico and, having done what he could to teach the people,
have built himself some kind of a ship and sailed eastward in the hope
of once more revisiting his native land before he died. At any rate,
such is the tradition. It was a tradition or legend which played no
small part in the conquest about to be effected.

IV. The March to Tenochtitlan

Into this loosely compact political and social organization,
hard-headed, clear-sighted, iron-hearted, steel-clad Cortes
precipitated himself. His was a mind at the same time capable of vast
and comprehensive designs and a most minute attention to small details.
For instance, he laid out the city of