Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/170

 of the foes who came to encounter him; and being thus entitled to his fortune and liberty, he was nevertheless slain by his enemies, who feared so valiant and fortunate a chieftain. By this perfidious act, the nation rendered itself eternally infamous among all the rest. The number of the victims, with whose blood the Teocallis of Mexico were in this manner, and in the "common sacrifice" annually deluged, is not precisely known. Clavigero thinks 20,000 nearer the truth than any of the other relations; but the question may well be asked. Whence came the subjects to glut the gods with these periodical sacrifices? It seems that no land could furnish them without depopulation.

In the consecration of the Great Temple, however, which, it is related, took place in the year 1486, under the predecessor of Montezuma, there appears no doubt among those who have most carefully examined the matter, that its walls and stairways, its altars and shrines, were baptized and consecrated with the blood of more than sixty thousand victims. "To make these horrible offerings" says the historian, "with more show and parade, they ranged the prisoners in two files, each a mile and a half in length, which began in the woods of Tacuba and Iztpalapan, and terminated at the Temple, where, as soon as the victims arrived, they were sacrificed."

Six millions of people, it is said, attended, and if this is not an exaggeration of tradition, there can be no wonder whence the captives sprung, or why the rite of sacrifice was instituted. If anything can pardon the cupidity and blood-thirstiness of the Christian Spaniard, for his overthrow of the Temple and Monarchy of Mexico, it is to be found in the cruel murders which were perpetrated, by the immolation of thousands of immortal beings to a blind and bloody idolatry.