As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill, it reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the sky, whereupon the priests immediately began the sacrifice of a human victim, whose breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chief _flamen_ kindled by friction. When the sufferer received the fatal stab from the sacrificial knife of _obsidian_, the machine was set in motion on his bosom, until the blaze had kindled. The anxious crowd stood round with fear and trembling. Silence reigned over nature and man. Not a word was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hill-sides and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods. At length, as the first sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses. As the sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic stricken Indians. Far and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, terraces, teocallis, house tops and city walls; and the prostrate multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life and fruition as a blessed omen of the restored favor of their gods and the preservation of the race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical centre of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled, from the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, the solemn procession of priests, princes and subjects, which had taken up its march from the capital on the preceding night, with solemn steps, returned once more to the abandoned capital, and restoring the gods to their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity in token of gratitude and relief from impending doom. [Illustration: AZTEC CALENDAR STONE.]