Page:Native Religions of Mexico and Peru.djvu/75

58 serpent, who is no other than the spring florescence, and therefore the Mexican Flora. It is not only amongst the Mexicans that the creeping progress of the spring vegetation, stretching along the ground towards the North, has suggested the idea of a divine serpent crawling over the earth. The Athenian myth of Erichthonius is a conception of the same order. The celestial humming-bird, then, offspring of the Sun, valiant and warlike from the day of his birth, champion of his mother, plundering and ever victorious, is the symbol instinctively seized on by the Aztec people; for it, too, had sprung from humble beginnings, had been despised and menaced by its neighbours, and had grown so marvellously in power and in wealth as to have become the invincible lord of Anahuac. Uitzilopochtli had grown with the Aztec people. He bears, amongst other surnames, that of Mextli, the warrior, whence the name of Mexico. He protects his people and ever extends the boundaries of its empire. And thus, in spite of his bearing the name of a little bird, his statue as an incarnate deity had become colossal. Yet the Aztecs did not lose the memory