AZTEC AND ROMISH IMAGES.

I again mounted my horse, angry at being cheated. Though the day was a
most lovely one, I rode home in fit humor to contrast the system of
paganism which Cortez introduced with the more poetical system which
preceded it, and to compare these cast-off child's dolls with the
allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such
images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city
canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth.
He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his
right hand rested upon the head of another serpent. This, according to
the laws of interpreting allegories, we should understand to signify
that the god had been renowned for his wisdom; that with the wisdom of
the serpent he had executed judgment; and that his meditations were the
profundity of wisdom. And yet this allegorical worship, defective as it
may have been, was forcibly superseded by the adoration of a child's
doll--one that had very possibly been worn out and thrown from a
nursery, and perhaps picked up by some passing monk, was made the
goddess of New Spain, and clothed with three petticoats, one adorned
with pearls, one with rubies, and one with diamonds, at an estimated
cost of $3,000,000. Which was the least objectionable superstition?

We have been taught to look upon the worship of the Aztecs as
monstrous; but the witnesses against them were themselves monsters, who
were seeking for a pretense to excuse their own brutality in reducing
the Indians to the most debasing slavery, while they appropriated to
their own use the best looking of the squaws, and kept such swarms of
supernumerary wives that each Spaniard had to brand them with a red-hot
iron in order to know his own family. The fathers of the present
mixed-breed population of Mexico tell us that the Aztecs offered human
sacrifices, and feasted upon human flesh. They hope, by dwelling upon
the enormities of the Indians, to excuse their own still more
detestable crimes. For three centuries their stories were
uncontradicted, and they have been received as historical verities. But
the character of the witnesses warrants us in receiving their
statements with some incredulity.

[36] _Bernal Diaz_, vol. i. p. 338.

[37] _Bernal Diaz_, vol. i. p. 31, 32.

CHAPTER XX.

The Paseo at Evening.--Ride to Chapultepec.--The old Cypresses
of Chapultepec.--The Capture of Cha