Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/137

Rh For more than one hundred years had the Aztecs been preying on other tribes. There was scarcely a tribe south of the table-land, from the Gulf to the ocean and as far down the coast as Yucatan, but was feeding this proud people with its best products. Field and fishery, mine and workshop, were subject to the cruel exactions of a resident officer appointed by one or all of the confederate tribes. Most cruel tyranny of all, the flower of the youth were yearly claimed for sacrifice upon the altars of these allies. We hear of a few tribes who would not bow their necks to the yoke. Brave Tlascala—a little republic penned up in the mountains between Mexico and the sea—went for years without cotton, salt or cacao because she could not produce these articles herself and would not admit confederate traders lest they should prove to be spies. Feeble remnants of several other tribes still existing can proudly boast that no banner of Montezuma's ever floated above their land.

Old prophecies about Feathered Serpent now loomed up as never before. There were storms and floods, earthquakes and meteors, which gloomily heralded his approach. One night in 1517, when there was no earthquake, nor even a storm in the air, Lake Tezcuco rose suddenly in a great wave and flooded the city. Comets glared in the sky, and once a strange untimely light in the east seemed the forerunner of a new sun. Would not the Fair God—as Feathered Serpent was called—be angry when he came back and found his altars polluted with blood and his name made hateful to those who were groaning under the burdens imposed upon them by the Aztec religion?

Whether or not Montezuma, the Aztec "chief-of-men" in those days, had a part in thus misrepresenting Feathered