Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/106

96 away in a northeasterly direction for his own country, the Holy Island, or Tlapallan, beyond the great ocean.

Such, in outline, was the tradition which Cortes found prevalent in Mexico on his arrival there, and powerfully influencing every inhabitant of the country. The Spaniards found that their advent was hailed as the fulfillment of the promise of Quetzatcoatl to return. The natives saw that they were white men, and bearded, like him; they had come in sailing-vessels such as the one he had used across the sea; they had clearly come from the mysterious Tlapallan; they were undoubtedly Quetzatcoatl and his brethren come, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy, to restore the period of peace and prosperity which the country had experienced for a short time many hundreds of years before.

The Spaniards made no scruple of encouraging and confirming a belief so highly favorable to their designs, and it is conceded by their writers that this belief, to a large extent, accounts for the comparative ease and marvelous rapidity with which a mere handful of men made themselves masters of a great and civilized empire and subjugated a warlike population of millions. To the last the unfortunate emperor Montezuma held to the belief that the King of Spain was Quetzatcoatl and Cortes his lieutenant and emissary under a sort of divine commission.

The Mexicans had preserved a minute and apparently an accurate description of the personal appearance and habits of Quetzatcoatl. He was a white man, advanced in years and tall in stature. His forehead was broad; he had a large beard and black hair. He is described as dressing in a long garment, over which there was a mantle marked with crosses. He was chaste and austere, temperate and abstemious, fasting frequently, and sometimes inflicting severe penances on himself, even to the drawing of blood. This is a description which was preserved for centuries in the traditions of a people who had no intercourse with or knowledge of Europe, who had never seen a white man, and who were themselves dark-skinned, with but few scanty hairs on the chin to represent a beard.

It is, therefore, difficult to suppose that this curiously accurate portraiture of Quetzatcoatl as an early European ecclesiastic was a mere invention in all its parts. Nor is it easier to understand why the early Mexicans should have been at pains to invent a Messiah so different from themselves and with such peculiar attributes. Yet, in spite of destructive wars, revolutions, and invasions; in spite of the breaking up and dispersal of tribes and nations once settled in the vast region now passing under the name of Mexico, the tradition of Quetzatcoatl, and the account of his personal peculiarities, survived among the people to the days of the Spanish invasion.