Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/66

34 So Lohengrin vanished to the upper air, and as with those he left behind, all their good luck was over for the Toltecs.

They did their best to preserve the memory of Quetzalcoatl. On the top of the pyramid of Cholula, which perhaps their fathers found standing when they reached the haven of their pilgrimage, the Toltecs raised an image of their deity, with features of ebony, although he was white; with a mitre on its head waving with plumes of fire; with a resplendent collar of gold around its neck, turquoise ear-rings, a sceptre all jewelled in one hand, and in the other a strange shield. Such is the description of the Conquistadores, who saw it; and as they destroyed it, and tumbled it down from its lofty site, they should know.

Evil days were coming to the Toltecs.

The traveller in Mexico to-day sees growing all along the sides of the railway huge stiff bunches of the Agave Americana. The leaves are long and pointed with prickles along the edge, growing in a tuft like huge artichokes. Their blue, rather than green, surface has a whitish bloom over it, which makes the plants look as if they had been made of tin and painted some time ago. Sometimes the leaves are very large, and the bunches enormous. When the time comes a stem shoots up from the heart of the tuft to a great height, putting out branches at the top, which blossom in a cluster of yellowish flowers. These branches are symmetrical, and the effect is like a lofty branched candlestick, sometimes forty feet high. The blossoms fade; the