The Slave Sculptor — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

72 THE SLAVE SCULPTOR. in the capital but throughout every province, we will dwell a moment upon this bloody, inhuman rite, held sacred by their religion. Brantz Mayer, in his history of the Conquest, has given us a con- densed, yet full description of this fearful holocaust. He says : *¢ This sacrifice was performed by a chief priest and six assistants, The principal flamen, habited in a red scapulary fringed with cotton, and crowned with a circlet of green and yellow plumes, assumed, for the occasion, the name of the deity to whom the offering was made. His acolytes, clad in white robes embroidered with black, their hands covered with leathern thongs, their foreheads filleted with parti-color- ed papers, their bodies dyed perfectly black, prepared the victim for the ; and, having dressed him in the insignia of the deity to whom he was to be sacrificed, bore him through the town begging alms for the temple. He was then carried to the summit of the teocalli, where four priests extended him across the curved gurface of an arched stone placed on the sacrificial stone, while another held his head firmly beneath a heavy yoke. ‘he chief priest — the topiltzin or sacrificer — then stretched the breast of the victim tight- ly by bending his body back as far as posible, and, seizing the obsidian knife of sacrifice, cut a deep gash across the region of the captive’s heart. The extreme tension of the flesh and muscles at once yielded beneath the blade, and the heart of the victim lay pal- itating in the bloody gap. The sacrificer immediately thrust his and into the wound, and tearing out the quivering vital, threw it at the feet of the idol,— inserted it with a golden into the mouth,— or, after offering it to the deity, consumed it in fire, and preserved the sacred ashes with the greatest reverence. When this horrid rite was finished in the temple, the victim’s body was thrown from the top of the teocalli, whence it was borne away and conyert- ed into a cannibal feast by the populace, or devoted to feed the beasts in the royal menagerie.”’ | How these people, semi-civilized and cultivated as they certainly were, could have tolerated such a horrid rite, is past comprehension. That Montezuma, who, in all his deportment, exhibited a truly noble, humane, and generous disposition, should have sanctioned the practice, not only of human sacrifice, but making feasts of the victim’s flesh, is equally incomprehensible, and a subject of wonder. After Tonatiuh and Mazina were placed in different apartments in Lord Ahuitzol’s palace, Toluca procured a light and visited the cell where the prophetess was imprisoned. Having removed the bandage from her face, he asked her in a sneering tone: ~ , ** Do you remember the scene on the island, where you predicted such fearful events yet to take place during my life ?”’ ** I spoke the truth! ’’ she answered. ‘** You know too much —altogether too much! This little cell is quite large enough for any person having such extensive informa : comicbooks.conn