Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/172

 166 in honor of the great god, Tezcatlipoca. The god of war, Huitzilopochtli, demanded a festival in this month. The priests formed an image of him and bore it about the streets, and a great number of quails were killed and thrown at the foot of the altar. The priests and nobles encouraged this sort of thing, because it gave them delicious food for their tables sufficient to last many days. Then was sacrificed the companion to the victim of Tezcatlipoca, the young man of perfect shape and bearing, who had been selected a twelvemonth previously. Though he had been for a year recognized as the visible presence of Huitzilopochtli, he had not been adored, as had his companion. Though doomed to die on a certain day, he had been allowed to ramble about the city as he pleased. On the last fatal morning he was dressed in a curious dress of painted paper, and his head adorned with a mitre of eagle feathers; over his shoulder he carried a small net and a bag, and in this costume he danced carelessly with the courtiers. That day was his last; his last hour was to come when he should deliver himself to the cruel priests; when he had done this, his breast was cut open in the arms of one of the priests, and his heart extracted. Dances and offerings of incense concluded the festival.

In June, in the sixth month, the god Tlaloc had his third and last festival, when the temple was strewn with rushes from one of the lakes. If the barbarous priests met any one on their way to fetch those rushes, they plundered them of all their possessions, beating them unmercifully if they offered resistance. Attended by a great multitude of people, they went out in canoes to a certain portion of the lake, where there was a whirlpool, and there drowned two children. Either in this month, or one of the preceding, they had sacrificed other children by shutting them up in caves, leaving them to starve to death. All