Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/211

Rh and gold, choice paintings, frescoed marbles that make the real look cheap, real marbles that hardly make their counterfeits cheaper, everywhere "a gem of purest ray serene." The work has cost thirty thousand dollars, and much of it has been given, both of labor and of substance. Not less than fifty thousand dollars is its actual cost, and that is half, at least, what it could be done for in the States.

And all this for a box that will not accommodate one hundred people, and that no hundred people will ever visit at one time except when it is dedicated, and possibly some feast day or two during the year.

It is a specimen of Romanism. Every thing for effect. A superb little chapel on the top of this pyramid was essential to the predominance of the system, possibly, in all the State. So the funds of the Church are lavished on it without stint, and Our Lady of the Remedies, to whom it is dedicated, is to be complimented by the prettiest bit of useless jewelry that has been laid at her shrine for many a day.

This pyramid, it is said, was dedicated to the worship of the white and benevolent god, Quetzalcotl. He it was who gave the people many good lessons, and left for the East, saying he would return again. It was his expected return that made so many of the people accept Cortez and his faith as the fulfillment of that prophecy. And, despite the cruelties of the Spaniards and the imperfections of their faith, there is no doubt that the benevolent god did return in that invasion. The horrid human sacrifices that took place on this very summit to this same god—twelve thousand a year, it is said—show how needful was that advent. Seventy thousand persons were sacrificed to the god of war in Mexico in the year 1486—only thirty-five years before that city fell. It was time for it to fall.

This summit, and many lesser ones about it, smoked daily with these victims. Their hearts were being cut out, three every hour of every day, year in and year out, and their bodies served up in daily religious and sacramental repast. Was it not time that it