Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 129: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

I20 - victim dies slowly—very slowly, and he calls for long. So they think the god is well pleased. ‘ Then the poor people who die, they are inl agonies—ah, so great a pain, and they bite and snap at the handle with their teeth. So here we see the marks. It is not nice—that, no, it is of the most horrible. But what would you? They were brutes, this people, but oh, so an- cient,’ and he shrugged his shoulders as if much might be forgiven to a people who had conducted their deviltries from time immemorial. I dropped the thing with a shiver and a tingling of my fingers. Brutes they were, indeed, these fearsome Mayans of the centuries of long ago. I could only give fervent thanks that they were not alive to welcome us to these savage shores. I could well imagine the delight that would be theirs in spitting us on their horrible prongs, and leaving us to slow agony, tickling, as they would doubt- less believe, their god’s ears with our delightful tortures. And if they had not left us to pant out our lives before this beastial image, we should have been offered up alive to the monster himself, to meet a swifter doom, perhaps, but one as fearful. I asked him how he was so sure of the matter. He explained that the whole of the devices that ran round the walls was the detailed dogma and rubric of the worship of Cay. Not only did these give full directions for sacrificial orgies, and prescribe particularly the transfix- ing of the victins in the manner spoken of, but also alluded to the keeping alive of these tormented wretches—I am only quoting from what he translated—with various drugs, the names of which he “was unable to understand. The inscription laid stress on the fact that the cries of these unfortunates were beloved of the god, and that, therefore, they were to be prolonged as far as possible. It was only to be considered natural that the worship of such a filthy mon- THE ARGOSY. strosity should breed degraded cruel- ties, but [ puzzled my head to think how Mayans in Central America could have possibly divined the existence of any- thing resembling this antediluvian Hor- ror in the Antarctic Circle. I questioned Lessaution on this point also. He said that his researches had led him to think that the last home of the Mastodon had been in Central America, and that before he became extinct he might have become the holy beast of the Mayan religion, much as the bull is to the Hindoos. He went on to explain his theory that as by lapse of time the huge beast be- came a memory and a myth, he rose from being a symbol of the godhead to being confounded with the god himself. His proportions had probably been ex- aggerated by half forgotten rumor, and with his size had grown his sacredness. To make themselves strong the priesthood had invented the human sa- crifices, by which, doubtless, they could remove their special antipathies or here- tics. | It was not surprising, he added, that the Mayans, born and nurtured in the service of this superstitious horror, should conceive the Dinosaur, when he thus descended upon them, to be their god in very deed. We must also reckon the effect their miraculous bringing to this desolate coast would have upon them. There was no doubt that they had fre- ° quently striven to do their divinity honor by human sacrifices, and that one of their first acts must have been the building of this temple under the shad- ow of the overhanging rock. It was to be supposed that the glacier had been diverted from its former chan- nel by some earthquake shock, and had poured upon the building from above, bringing to utter destruction the town that had stood round it, the only excep- tions being the house we had found up- on the mountainside, and the one Par- sons and I had discovered in the glacter. This last had been saved by the cS? eo