Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/133

Rh of a conflagration, the air was rent with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic stricken Indians. Far and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, terraces, teocallis, house tops and city walls; and the prostrate multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life and fruition as a blessed omen of the restored favor of their gods and the preservation of the race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical centre of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled, from the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, the solemn, procession of priests, princes and subjects, which had taken up its march from the capital on the preceding night, with solemn steps, returned once more to the abandoned capital, and restoring the gods to their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity in token of gratitude and relief from impending doom.