Alamo Ranch Part 6

"The Mexicans looked confidently for the second coming of this benevolent deity, who is said to have been tall in stature, with a white skin, long, dark hair, and a flowing beard. Undoubtedly, this cherished tradition, as the chroniclers affirm, prepared the way for the reception of the Spanish conquerors.

"Long before the landing of the Spaniards in Mexico, rumors of the appearance of these men with fair complexions and flowing beards--so unlike their own physiognomy--had startled the superst.i.tious Aztecs. The period for the return of Quetzalcoatl was now near at hand. The priestly oracles were consulted; they are said to have declared, after much deliberation, that the Spaniards, though not G.o.ds, were children of the Sun; that they derived their strength from that luminary, and were only vulnerable when his beams were withdrawn; and they recommended attacking them while buried in slumber. This childish advice, so contrary to Aztec military usage, was reluctantly followed by these credulous warriors, and resulted in the defeat and b.l.o.o.d.y slaughter of nearly the whole detachment.

"The conviction of the supernaturalism of the Spaniard is said to have gained ground by some uncommon natural occurrences, such as the accidental swell and overflow of a lake, the appearance of a comet, and conflagration of the great temple.

"We are told that Montezuma read in these prodigies special annunciations of Heaven that argued the speedy downfall of his empire.

"From this somewhat digressive account of the Aztec superst.i.tion, in regard to the 'second coming' of their beneficent tutelar divinity, which, as may be seen, played into the hands of Cortez, and furthered his hostile designs upon Mexico, let us return to the time in Aztec history when no usurping white man had set foot upon Montezuma's territory.

"We are told that this people, in their comparative ignorance of the material universe, sought relief from the oppressive idea of the endless duration of time by breaking it up into distinct cycles, each of several thousand years' duration. At the end of each of these periods, by the agency of one of the elements, the human family, as they held, was to be swept from the earth, and the sun blotted out from the heavens, to be again freshly rekindled. With later theologians, who have less excuse for the unlovely superst.i.tion, they held that the wicked were to expiate their sins everlastingly in a place of horrible darkness. It was the work of a (so-called) Christianity to add to the Aztec place of torment the torture of perpetual fire and brimstone. The Aztec heaven, like the Scandinavian Valhalla, was especially reserved for their heroes who fell in battle. To these privileged souls were added those slain in sacrifice. These fortunate elect of the Aztecs seem to have been destined for a time to a somewhat lively immortality, as they at once pa.s.sed into the presence of the Sun, whom they accompanied with songs and choral dances in his bright progress through the heavens. After years of this stirring existence, these long-revolving spirits were kindly permitted to take breath; and thereafter it was theirs to animate the clouds, to reincarnate in singing birds of beautiful plumage, and to revel amidst the bloom and odors of the gardens of Paradise.

"Apart from this refined Elysium and a moderately comfortable h.e.l.l, void of appliances for the torture of burning, the Aztecs had a third place of abode for immortals. Thither pa.s.sed those 'o'er bad for blessing and o'er good for banning,' who had but the merit of dying of certain (capriciously selected) diseases. These commonplace spirits were fabled to enjoy a negative existence of indolent contentment. 'The Aztec priests,' says Prescott, 'in this imperfect stage of civilization, endeavored to dazzle the imagination of this ignorant people with superst.i.tious awe, and thus obtained an influence over the popular mind beyond that which has probably existed in any other country, even in ancient Egypt.'

"Time will not permit here a detailed account of this insidious priesthood; its labored and pompous ceremonial; its midnight prayers; its cruel penance (as the drawing of blood from the body by flagellation, or piercing of the flesh with the thorns of the aloe), akin to the absurd austerities of Roman Catholic fanaticism. The Aztec priest, unlike the Roman, was allowed to marry, and have a family of his own; and not _all_ the religious ceremonies imposed by him were austere.

Many of them were of a light and cheerful complexion, such as national songs and dances, in which women were allowed to join. There were, too, innocent processions of children crowned with garlands, bearing to the altars of their G.o.ds offerings of fruit, ripened maize, and odoriferous gums. It was on these peaceful rites, derived from his milder and more refined Toltec predecessors, that the fierce Aztec grafted the loathsome rite of human sacrifice.

"To what extent this abomination was carried cannot now be accurately determined. The priestly chroniclers, as has been shown, were not above the meanness of making capital for the church, by exaggerating the enormities of the pagan dispensation. Scarcely any of these reporters pretend to estimate the yearly human sacrifice throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand; and some carry the number as high as fifty thousand. A good Catholic bishop, writing a few years after the conquest, states in his letter that twenty thousand victims were yearly slaughtered in the capital. A lie is brought to absolute perfection when its author is able to believe it himself.

"Torquemada, another chronicler, often quoted by Prescott, turns this into twenty thousand _infants_!

"These innocent creatures, he tells us, were generally bought by the priests from parents poor enough and superst.i.tious enough to stifle the promptings of nature, and were, at seasons of drought, at the festival of Haloc, the insatiable G.o.d of the rain, offered up, borne to their doom in open litters, dressed in festal robes, and decked with freshly blown flowers, their pathetic cries drowned in the wild chant of the priests. It is needless to add that this a.s.sumption has but the slightest groundwork of likelihood.

"Las Casas, before referred to, thus boldly declares: 'This is the estimate of brigands who wish to find an apology for their own atrocities;' and loosely puts the victims at so low a rate as to make it clear that any specific number is the merest conjecture.

"Prescott, commenting on these fabulous statements, instances the dedication of the great temple of the 'Mexican War G.o.d' in 1486, when the prisoners, for years reserved for the purpose, were said to have been ranged in files forming a procession nearly two miles long; when the ceremony consumed, as averred, several days, and seventy thousand captives are declared to have perished at the shrine of this terrible deity. In view of this statement, Prescott logically observes: 'Who can believe that so numerous a body would have suffered themselves to be led unresistingly, like sheep, to the slaughter? Or how could their remains, too great for consumption in the ordinary way, be disposed of without breeding a pestilence in the capital? One fact,' he adds, 'may be considered certain. It was customary to preserve the skulls of the sacrificed in buildings appropriate to the purpose; and the companions of Cortez say they counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand skulls in one of the edifices.'

"Religious ceremonials were arranged for the Aztec people by their crafty and well-informed priesthood, and were generally typical of some circ.u.mstances in the character or history of the deity who was the object of them. That in honor of the G.o.d called by the Aztecs 'the soul of the world,' and depicted as a handsome man endowed with perpetual youth, was one of their most important sacrifices. An account of this sanguinary performance is gravely given by Prescott and other writers.

Though highly sensational and melodramatic, since our betters have found it believable, we transcribe it for the New Koshare; thus runs the tale:--

"'A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty, and without a single blemish on his body, was selected to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the ancient Mexicans were as fond as are their descendants at the present day. When he went abroad he was attended by a train of the royal pages; and as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life until within a month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls were then given him as concubines; and with these he continued to live in idle dalliance, feasted at the banquets of the princ.i.p.al n.o.bles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity. At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The term of his short-lived glories was at an end.

"'He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revelry. One of the royal barges transported him across the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the city. Hither the inhabitants flocked to witness the consummation of the ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers, and broke in pieces the musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of his captivity.

"'On the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted locks flowed disorderedly over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. They led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper with its upper surface somewhat convex. On this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and limbs, while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his b.l.o.o.d.y office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of _itzli_ (a volcanic substance hard as flint), and, inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The minister of death, first holding the heart up towards the sun (also an object of their wors.h.i.+p) cast it at the feet of the G.o.d, while the mult.i.tudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration.'

"The tragic circ.u.mstances depicted in this sanguinary tale were used by the priests to 'point a moral.' The immolation of this unhappy youth was expounded to the people as a type of human destiny, which, brilliant in its beginning, often closes in sorrow and disaster.

"In this loathsome manner, if we may believe the account given, was the mangled body disposed of. It was delivered by the priests to the warrior who had taken the captive in battle, and served up by him at an entertainment given to his friends.

"This, we are told, was no rude cannibal orgy, but a refined banquet, teeming with delicious beverages, and delicate viands prepared with dainty art, and was attended by guests of both s.e.xes, and conducted with all the decorum of civilized life. Thus, in the Aztec religious ceremonial, refinement and the extreme of barbarism met together.

"The Aztec nation had, at the time of the Conquest, many claims to the character of a civilized community. The debasing influence of their religious rites it was, however, that furnished the fanatical conquerors with their best apology for the subjugation of this people. One-half condones the excuses of the invaders, who with the cross in one hand and the b.l.o.o.d.y sword in the other, justified their questionable deeds by the abolishment of human sacrifice.

"The oppressions of Montezuma, with the frequent insurrections of his people," concluded the Antiquary, "when in the latter part of his reign one-half the forces of his empire are said to have been employed in suppressing the commotions of the other, disgust at his arrogance, and his outrageous fiscal exactions, reduced his subjects to that condition which made them an easy prey to Cortez, whose army at last overpowered the emperor and swept the Aztec civilization from the face of the earth."

"I find it strange," said the Journalist (in the little talk that followed Mr. Morehouse's able paper), "that civilized nations have held an idea so monstrous as the necessity of vicarious physical suffering of a victim to appease the wrath of a divine being with the erring creatures who, such as they are, are the work of his hands.

"That unenlightened races, from time immemorial, should have supposed that the shedding of blood propitiated their angry G.o.d, or G.o.ds, is but the natural outcome of ignorance and superst.i.tion; but, that in this twentieth century, civilized wors.h.i.+ppers should sing--

'There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains'--

pa.s.ses my understanding."

"In the ruins of Palenque there is," said the Antiquary, "a scene portrayed on its crumbling walls, in which priests are immolating in a furnace placed at the feet of an image of Saturn the choicest infants of the nation, while a trumpeter enlivens the occasion with music, and in the background a female spectator, supposed to be the mother of the victim, looks on."

"The sacrifices to Moloch (or Saturn)," interpolated the Minister, "were marked features of the Phoenician idolatry. In the Bible account we read that even their kings 'made their children to pa.s.s through the fire to Moloch.'"

"Well," commented the Grumbler, "it may be said of a portion of this evening's entertainment that it is distinguished by the charm found by 'Helen's' sanguinary-minded 'baby,' in the story of 'Goliath's head,'--it is 'all bluggy.'"

"Right you are," responded the star boarder with a shudder. "Cold s.h.i.+vers have meandered along my poor back until it has become one dreadful block of ice; and, judging by the horror depicted on these ladies' faces as they listened to the details of the Aztec sacrifice, I fancy that they too have supped o'er-full of horrors."

The Minister's eye rested for a moment affectionately on his stanch little wife. He sighed, and looked with mild rebuke on these G.o.dless triflers.

And now the Koshare (some of them stoutly orthodox) wisely put by the question of vicarious atonement, and summarily adjourned.

CHAPTER IX

It was but the next week when, unexpectedly as thunderbolts now and then surprise us on days of serene, unclouded sky, an unlooked-for domestic calamity startled Alamo Ranch.

Dennis, the good-natured Irish waiter, and Fang Lee, the Chinese cook, had come to blows. The battle had been (so to put it) a religious controversy, and such, as we know, have a bitterness all their own. It was inaugurated by Dennis, who, as a good Catholic, had, on a Friday, refused to sample one of Fang's _chef-d'oeuvres_,--a dish of veal cutlets with mushroom sauce. A mutual interchange of offensive words, taunts highly derogatory to his holiness Pope Leo XIII. and equally insulting to the memory of that ancient Chinese sage, Confucius, had finally led to a bout of fisticuffs. In this encounter, Fang Lee, a slightly built, undersized celestial, had naturally been worsted at the hand of the robust Hibernian, a good six feet five in his stockings.

Dennis, the "chip well off his shoulder," had peacefully returned to the duties of his vocation, nonchalantly carrying in the dinner, removing the plates and dishes, and subsequently whistling "St. Patrick's Day in the Morning" under the very nose of the Confucian, as he unconcernedly washed his plates and gla.s.ses, and scoured his knives. Fang, having meantime sent in his dinner, cleaned his pots and pans, brushed his baggy trousers, adjusted his disordered pigtail, and straightway gave in his notice; and with sullen dignity retired to the privacy of his bedroom, for the avowed purpose of packing his box. On the ensuing morning he would shake from his feet the dust of Alamo Ranch.

Vain were the endeavors of his discomfited employers to gain the ear of the implacable Fang Lee. He stood out resolutely for the privacy of his small sleeping apartment, obstinately refusing admission to outsiders.

In a house replete with boarders, and forty miles from available cooks, Fang's pending loss was indeed a calamity.

In this dilemma, the disheartened landlord and his wife begged the intercession of the star boarder,--always in high favor with the domestics, and known to be especially in the good graces of the Chinaman. Long did this envoy of peace unsuccessfully besiege the bedroom door of the offended Fang Lee. In the end, however, he gained admittance; and with adroit appeals to the better nature of the irate cook, and a tactful representation of the folly of giving up a good situation for the sake of a paltry quarrel, he finally brought Fang Lee down from his "high horse," and persuading good-natured Dennis to make suitable friendly advances, effectually healed the breach.

Ere nightfall amity reigned in the ranch kitchen, and the respective pockets of the belligerents were the heavier for a silver dollar,--a private peace-offering contributed by the arbitrator. An Irishman is nothing if not magnanimous; Dennis readily "buried the hatchet," handle and all.

Not so Fang Lee, who, smugly pocketing his dollar, covertly observed to the giver, by way of the last word, "All samee, Pope bigee dam foolee."

With genial satisfaction the star boarder received the thanks of the Browns for having saved to them their cook, and, with simple pleasure in the result of his diplomacy, met the encomiums of his fellow-boarders.

To this gracious and beautiful nature, replete with "peace and good-will to man," to help and serve was but "the natural way of living."

CHAPTER X

At mid-March, in this sun-loved land, the genial season far outdoes our own belated Northern May. Already, in Mesilla Valley, the peach, pear, and apricot buds of the orchard are showing white and pink. In the garden, rose-bushes are leaving out, and mocking-birds make the air sweet with song.