Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/57

 Rh residence. In those days people must have paid more attention to the voices of the birds than now, or must have given their utterances more significance. Who of us cannot recall some bird of our own land that would give us a similar message, if we would but construe it so? The singular thing about these bird-voices is, that they always speak in the language of the people they dwell amongst, and seem not to have an universal language of their own!

Well, this was enough for Huitziton and the deluded people who listened to him, and so they packed up what few things comprised their household effects, and began to travel. It is thought that all the seven tribes started together, or about the same time, but all had got into the valley of Mexico and comfortably settled before the Aztecs finally reached it. It is thought that they crossed the river Colorado near the head of the Gulf of California, and thence went southeastwardly. There are in that part of Mexico the ruins of great stone buildings, called the casas grandes, or great houses, which it is believed the Aztecs built in the halts during this migration. They were constructed on the same plan as those of New Mexico, where the Pueblo people live, with terraces, each floor, or story, reached only by ladders. They still kept marching southward in an aimless sort of way, impelled by an irresistible instinct, and we next hear of them at Chicomoztoc, or the Place of Seven Caves, which one writer thinks was near the present city of Zacatecas, where there are the remains of ancient buildings. Here six of the tribes separated from the Mexicans and went off independently, though they all subsequently met again in the Mexican valley. Here, or at some previous stopping-place, the Mexicans had made themselves a god of wood, which they called Huitzilopochtli. naming him probably from their leader, Huitziton, who was now dead. Four crafty men appointed themselves priests,