Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/69

 Rh to have seen these chinampas, or floating gardens, none have existed within the memory of people now living. What are now called by that name are squares of firm land surrounded by ditches, which may at one time have formed these gardens, but which have been left by the falling of the lake, and no longer float. Upon these they raised their limited supply of vegetables: corn, peppers, chia, beans, and gourds, or pumpkins.

[A. D. 1338 or 1340.] It was not long that this quarrelsome people could live together without fighting amongst themselves, and ten or fifteen years after the founding of the city the two parties—the Mexicans and the Tlatelolcans—separated, the latter going to a still smaller island near the main one. The Mexicans, however, kept the god, and, though their neighbors were more progressive at first, were in the end triumphant. Though for a while each faction had a separate government and its king, the Mexican is the one that finally absorbed the other, and whose history we shall mainly follow.

Before we close this chapter we are obliged to chronicle another deed of blood that disgraced this degraded people. Their god, through his servants the priests, had given out that they must have a maiden of foreign birth to be created the "mother of the gods." They sent to the King of the Colhuas, and asked him for his daughter to be erected to this high place in their catalogue of deities. Very much flattered, the unsuspecting chief sent his beloved daughter, whom the Mexicans conducted in triumph to their capital. There, at the command of the priests, this innocent maiden was killed and flayed, and one of the young braves of the tribe clothed in her skin. The unfortunate king was then sent for to do homage to this mother of the gods. He entered the temple with a censer in his hand, and was about to begin his worship when he discovered in the