Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/92

84 among these refined and cultured Indian tribes. The practice had been common among the Aztecs from the earliest times, and gave to the whole race a fierce and gloomy character which made them hated by all their neighbors. The position which they gained as head of the three confederate tribes afforded them an opportunity to engraft this hideous custom on the milder worship of the people around the lake. For about one hundred years, or during the time of this supremacy, human sacrifices and the sacrificial eating of human flesh prevailed throughout Mexico as never before. About the time of the Spanish conquest the burden of such a religion became intolerable, and Mexico seemed as ripe for destruction as was old Sodom or the Canaanites when their cup of iniquity was full. From Yucatan, on the far south-east, to the most distant of the Nahua tribes, on the north, the altars reeked with human blood. The practice was so universal, and so many victims were at last demanded, that death in this terrible form must have stared every one in the face. A large tribe on the Pacific slope was so nearly exterminated in one of the wars begun and carried on to obtain captives for sacrifice that men were not left to till the ground or work the mines; all who had not been slain outright in defending their homes were borne away to die on Aztec altars. A colony was sent over from Mexico city to take possession of the empty houses and unharvested fields, while the. proud cities enthroned on the shore of the lake sought for other communities to lay waste. If silent walls could speak, many a beautiful city among the scores now in mournful ruin throughout Mexico could tell of scenes of carnage when, in the name of the gods they all worshiped, the foe came down upon them in