Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/84

76 there he stayed for twenty years. The people built temples in his honor and sat at "his feet to learn. Like Cain, "the Fair God," as he was called, disapproved of bloody sacrifices, and commanded his followers to offer nothing on his peaceful altars but sweet incense and the fruits of the earth. After twenty happy years Feathered Serpent left Mexico by the way he came. His snakeskin boat was waiting for him on the shore of the Gulf. Turning to his friends who had followed him, he bade them farewell, promising that some day he would come again from his home toward the rising sun and take possession of their country.

The white race to whom this old hero belonged are indebted to him for their successful entry into Mexico. At the time the Spanish vessels made their appearance, in 1517, there was a universal expectation that the Fair God was about to return, and the white sails of the vessels were mistaken for bright-winged birds who had come to bring back their benefactor from his long exile.

The Aztecs adopted this god, among many others, after they came to Mexico; his shrine at Cholula was visited by multitudes of devotees from all parts of the country. This city was older than Mexico, and is supposed by many to have been founded by the Toltecs. There, on the top of the famous pyramid of Cholula, was a large hemispherical temple in honor of this Fair God. Another temple was reared to him within the serpent-wall of the great temple of Mexico; it was entered through a gate fashioned like the mouth of a hideous dragon. The black, flame-encircled face of his image enshrined there and the altar dripping with blood had taught the people to think of him as a fit companion for the war-god himself—that most bloodthirsty of all Mexican deities.