THE GREAT TEMPLE.

113

city.

of this temple. Cortes uses the word " temple," A sacred but it might rather be called a sacred city, as it contained many temples, and the abodes of all the priests and virgins who ministered at them, also a university, and an arsenal. It was enclosed by lofty stone walls, and was entered by four portals, surmounted by bastions. No less than twenty truncated pyramids of solid masonry, faced with a polished surface of white cement that shone like silver in the sun, rose up from within that enclosure. High over them all towered the great temple dedicated to the god of war. This, like the rest, was a truncated pyramid, with ledges round it, and with two small towers upon the summit, in which were placed the images of the great god of war (Huitzilopochtli) and of the principal deity of all (Tezcatlipuk), the Mexican Jupiter. It is sad to own that an en

* "Entre estas Mezquitas hay una, que es la principal, que no hay lengua humana, que sepa explicar la grandeza, y particularidades de ella: porque es tan grande, que dentro del circuito de ella, que es todo cercado de Muro muy alto, se podia muy bien facer una Villa de quinientos Vecinos.”—LORENZANA, p. 105.

† Cortes says forty; but I prefer abiding by the words of "the Anonymous Conqueror."

trance into these fair-seeming buildings would have gone far to dissipate the admiration which a traveller-if we may imagine one preceding Cortes-would, up to this moment, have felt for Mexico. The temples and palaces, the polished, glistening towers, the aviaries, the terraces, the gardens on the house-tops (many-coloured, for they were not like those at Damascus, where only the rose and the jasmine are to be seen); in a word, the bright, lively and lovely city would have been forgotten in the vast disgust that would have filled the mind of the beholder, The temple when he saw the foul, blood-besmeared idols,

foul within.

with the palpitating hearts of that day's victims lying before them, and the black-clothed, filthy, unkempt priests ministering to these hideous compositions of paste* and human blood. "Let the stern Cortes enter," is the cry which the amazed spectator would have uttered, when he

"Elles étaient composées de la réunion de toutes les plantes dont ils se nourrissent, ils les enduisaient de sang de cœur humain ('Le impastavano con sangue di cuori d'huomini.'-RAMUSIO); voilà de quelle matière leurs dieux étaient faits."-Relation sur la NouvelleEspagne, chap. 12. TERNAUX-COMPANS, Voyages.

saw these horrors, and thought of the armed men who were coming to destroy them. And yet this conjunction, which was to be met with at Mexico, of beauty and horror, is no new thing, and something very like it may be discovered in other guise throughout the world! Civilization side

by side with utter barbarism! Such is the contrast to be found in the present age too; and such, perhaps, in each of ourselves. And so, with some feeling of pity, even for a nation of cruel and bloodthirsty idolaters, we may contemplate the arrival of the Avenger as he makes his entry into Mexico.

If any one should think that the foregoing apology for the Mexican barbarities is overstrained, let him imagine, for a moment, that Christianity had arisen in the New instead of the Old World; that some Peruvian Columbus had led the way, from West to East, across the Atlantic; and that American missionaries had come to Rome, in the first century of the Christian era. Honoured by the Emperor as ambassadors from some "barbarian" power, and taken in his suite to the Coliseum, with what intense disgust and consternation would these pious men have regarded

Worse

savages in

the Coli

seum at

Rome than in the great temple of

Mexico.

They would have seen

all that they saw there.
men torn in pieces by wild beasts, not for any-
thing so respectable as superstition, but simply
to minister to that most vile and morbid of plea-
surable excitements which is to be derived from
witnessing (ourselves in safety) the struggles and
the agonies of others. "These spectators are
indeed savages," they would have exclaimed:
"and behold, there are women, too, amongst
them! No longer beautiful, in our eyes, are
the golden palaces, the marble colonnades, and
the countless images, admirably sculptured, which
we find amongst these barbarous Roman people.
Let us hasten to convert them."

But the Old World has always been proud of its Rome, and has spoken of its Romans as the masters of civilization.

CHAPTER IV.

Interviews between Cortes and Montezuma-Cortes visits the Great Temple-The Mexican Idolatry.

HE route by which Cortes entered Reception

of Cortes

zuma.

Mexico was along the great causeway by Montewhich led from Iztapalapa. As he approached the city, he was met by a thousand Mexican nobles richly clad, who, after the fashion of their country, saluted him by laying their hands in the dust, and then kissing them. This ceremony, as it was performed by each one separately, occupied more than an hour. Cortes then passed over the drawbridge which led into the city, and was received there by Montezuma. The monarch had been borne from the city in a rich litter, but when he approached the bridge, he descended to receive Cortes, being supported on the arms of his brother and his nephew, the Kings of