r, but Quetzalcoatl watches steadily the
East, and is the first to see and welcome the Orb of Light. He is fair in
complexion, with abundant hair and a full beard, bordering on the red,[3]
as are all the dawn heroes, and like them he was an instructor in the
arts, and favored peace and mild laws.

[Footnote 1: Chavero, _Anales del Museo Nacional de Mexico_, Tom. II, p.
14, 243.]

[Footnote 2: _Historia de las Cosas de Nueva Espana_, Lib. VII, cap. II.]

[Footnote 3: "La barba longa entre cana y roja; el cabello largo, muy
llano." Diego Duran, _Historia_, in Kingsborough, Vol. viii, p. 260.]

His name is symbolic, and is capable of several equally fair renderings.
The first part of it, _quetzalli_, means literally a large, handsome green
feather, such as were very highly prized by the natives. Hence it came to
mean, in an adjective sense, precious, beautiful, beloved, admirable. The
bird from which these feathers were obtained was the _quetzal-tototl_
(_tototl_, bird) and is called by ornithologists _Trogon splendens_.

The latter part of the name, _coatl_, has in Aztec three entirely
different meanings. It means a guest, also twins, and lastly, as a
syncopated form of _cohuatl_, a serpent. Metaphorically, _cohuatl_ meant
something mysterious, and hence a supernatural being, a god. Thus
Montezuma, when he built a temple in the city of Mexico dedicated to the
whole body of divinities, a regular Pantheon, named it _Coatecalli_, the
House of the Serpent.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Coatecalli, que quiere decir el _templo de la culebra_, que
sin metafora quiere decir _templo de diversos dioses_." Duran, _Historia
de las Indias de Nueva Espana_, cap. LVIII.]

Through these various meanings a good defence can be made of several
different translations of the name, and probably it bore even to the
natives different meanings at different times. I am inclined to believe
that the original sense was that advocated by Becerra in the seventeenth
century, and adopted by Veitia in the eighteenth, both competent Aztec
scholars.[1] They translate Quetzalcoatl as "the admirable twin," and
though their notion that this refers to Thomas Didymus, the Apostle, does
not meet my views, I believe they were right in their etymology. The
reference is to the duplicate nature of the Light-God as seen in the
setting and rising sun, the sun of to-day and yesterday, the same yet
different. This has its parallels in many other mythologies.[2]

[Footnote 1: