the occasion when all the nobles in Mexico who lived near the frontiers of an enemy brought the slaves whom they had captured to the capital for sacrifice.
When we find that some circumstance of cruelty even intrudes upon the worship of the kindliest and most joyous gods it may well be supposed that the demonology of Mexico is grim in the extreme, nor can we be at all astonished that the first explorers and the earlier Spanish authors again and again expressed their horror of the terrible imagination and primitive fears which peopled the gloom of a Mexican midnight with the abominable shapes of foulest devils and vengeful dead. Probably the most horrible, as he is possibly the most powerful, of the Mexican gods was Tezcatlipocâ of whom Bernal Diaz says: “And this Tezcatepuca was the god of hell and had charge of the souls of the Mexicans, and his body was girt with figures like little devils with snakes’ tails.”[54] This hideous figure, it is very significant to remark, particularly favoured cross-roads, where the Ciuateteo, who are vampire-witches, held their sabbat. Tezcatlipocâ was also known as Yaotzin, “The Enemy” and in a thousand horrid phantom shapes he haunted the woods during the dark hours. He bore in his hand a magical instrument. From him proceeded those eerie and mysterious sounds which are heard at night and which fill with strange forebodings not only luckless travellers but even those who shudder when sheltered in their homes. He would often utter the howl of the jaguar, and the ill-omened cry, “yeccan, yeccan” the screech of the uactli bird, a species of hawk, whose note sounded a swift death to him who heard it. Another of his guises was the Youaltepuztli, or “ax of the night.” When all was most silent and most still there might be heard near some remote temple a sound as if an ax were being laid to the roots of the trees. Should anyone dare to investigate the cause of the noise he was suddenly caught by Tezcatlipocâ who appeared as a decomposing headless corpse in whose mouldering breast were set “two little doors meeting in the centre,” and it was the swift opening and shutting of these which produced the sound of a man hewing down the trees. If some brave hero could plunge his hand into the aperture and clutch the black heart he might demand what ransom he would ere he let the demon go. But he must be one to whom fear was unknown
