Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/43

Rh and its image, carved in stone, in his lordly pleasure-grounds on the shore of Lake Tezcuco, gave the title and the history of the owner.

By giving our readers the English signification of these names they will have some advantages possessed by old Mexican readers, who, it is likely, would have stumbled as often as we do over the spelling, if not over the pronunciation, of these words. Thus, for instance, Quetzalcohuatl (ketzalcowattle), a hero-saint who figures in Mexican history, shall be "Feathered Serpent," and, instead of Huitizilapochtli—that frightful name for their still more frightful war-god—we will say "Humming-Bird," which is the decidedly mild interpretation thereof. The Aztec tribe with which our story has most to do were among the latest arrivals on the great table-lands of Mexico. A curious map of their migrations before they came there was still in existence when the Europeans overran the country. It was so different from the maps in use in Spain that the Spanish soldiers who captured it supposed it was an Aztec embroidery-pattern, and sent it as such to the old country. They also had a history of the tribe in picture-writing. This declares that Mexico was peopled by men who came out of a cave and afterward traveled all over the country on the backs of turtles. Aztlan, the home of the Aztecs, was written with atl, a waved line (17:55, 2 February 2019 (UTC)~)—their picture-sign for water—put beside one of a pyramidal temple and a palm tree. We may know by the latter picture that Aztlan was not very far to the north.

The Aztecs were a band of fierce savages who took refuge in the swamps near the site of the present City of Mexico after a migratory life elsewhere. It is quite possible to fix the date of this last remove by records kept