In Holy Week, now, in the city of Mexico, the shores of the canal leading to the town are decorated with flowers. Native boats float over the water heaped with bright blossoms, and the dark heads of the Indian girls are crowned with wreaths of poppies. They bring these blossoms in masses to decorate the altars of Nuestra Señora in the churches. Her image is the symbol of their divinity transferred from the earlier idols their remote ancestors worshipped. In the National Museum in Mexico is an image in the form of a coiled serpent in pyramidal form--its body covered with feathers--carved of basaltic porphyry. This model, which appears in many of the old monuments, is regarded as the symbol of the mysterious Shining Serpent. Whatever were his serious claims to distinction, his worshippers invested him with wonderful attributes. His sojourn in their land marked its most prosperous period. In his time the seasons were the fairest, the earth the most productive. Flowers blossomed, fruits ripened without the toil of the gardener. The cotton in its pod turned blue, red, or yellow without the trouble of the dyer, so that the fabrics lightly woven and without fatigue took on rich and harmonious tints. The air was continually filled with perfumes and the songs of sweet birds. Every man loved his neighbor, and all dwelt in peace and harmony together. These were the halcyon days of Anahuac. For twenty years the Toltecs knew no disaster, but flourished and spread under the influence of their strange protector. And then, one day the strange god disappeared from among them, descending to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where he bade farewell to the crowd that had followed him, promising, as he did so, that in the fulness of time his descendants, white men like himself, with full beards, should return and instruct them. Then he stepped into a magic bark made of the skins of serpents, and sailed away over an ocean unknown to these simple men towards the fabled land of Tlapalla. So Lohengrin vanished to the upper air, and as with those he left behind, all their good luck was over for the Toltecs. They did their best to preserve the memory of Quetzalcoatl. On the top of the pyramid of Cholula, which perhaps their fathers found standing when they reached the haven of their pilgrimage, the Toltecs raised an image of their deity, with features of ebony, although he was white; with a mitre on its head waving with plumes of fire; with a resplendent collar of gold around its neck, turquoise ear-rings, a sceptre all jewelled in one hand, and in the other a strange shield. Such is the description of the Conquistadores, who saw it; and as they destroyed it, and tumbled it down from its lofty site, they should know. Evil days were coming to the Toltecs.