An equally ancient and authentic myth makes Huitzilopochtli one of four brothers, born at one time of the uncreated, bi-sexual divinity, the God of our Life, Tonacatecutli, who looms dimly at the head of the Aztec Pantheon. His brothers were the black and white Tezcatlipoca and the fair-skinned, bearded Quetzalcoatl. Yet a third myth places the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl directly in Tula, and names his mother, Chimalman, a virgin, divinely impregnated, like Coatlicue, by the descending spirit of the Father of All.[117] Tula was not only the birthplace, but the scene of the highest activity of all these greatest divinities of the ancient Nahuas. Around the Coatepetl and on the shores of the Tollanatl—“the Water of Tula”—as the stream is called which laves the base of the hill, the mighty struggles of the gods took place which form the themes of almost all Aztec mythology. Tulan itself is no longer the hamlet of rush houses at the foot of the Coatepec, surmounted by its pueblo of rough stone and baked brick; it is a glorious city, founded and governed by Quetzalcoatl himself, in his first avatar as Hueman, the strong-handed. “All its structures were stately and gracious, abounding in ornaments. The walls within were incrusted with precious stones or finished in beautiful stucco, presenting the appearance of a rich mosaic. Most wonderful of all was the temple of Quetzalcoatl. It had four chambers, one toward the east finished in pure gold, another toward the west lined with turquoise and emeralds, a third toward the south decorated with all manner of delicate sea-shells, and a fourth toward the north resplendent with red jasper and shells.”[118] The descriptions of other buildings, equally wondrous, have been lovingly preserved by the ancient songs.[119] What a grief that our worthy friend, M. Charnay, digging away in 1880 on the Coatepec, at the head of a gang of forty-five men, as he tells us,[120] unearthed no sign of these ancient glories, in which, for one, he fully believed! But, alas! I fear that they are to be sought nowhere out of the golden realm of fancy and mythical dreaming. Nor, in that happy age, was the land unworthy such a glorious city. Where now the neglected corn-patches surround the shabby huts of Tula, in the good old time “the crops of maize never failed, and each ear was as long as a man’s arm; the cotton burst its pods, not white only, but spontaneously ready dyed to the hand in brilliant scarlet, green, blue and yellow; the gourds were so large that they could not be clasped in the arms; and birds of brilliant plumage nested on every tree!”