“At this time the priests began to pray earnestly for rain, doing penance the while. Taking their censers of serpent-headed brass, they threw the incense called yiauhtli, they rang little bells attached to the censer, and censed all the statues of the gods and all the quarters of the town. As on another occasion, they made images of the mountains during the time they fasted, and prepared the paper usually used in these ceremonies. During five days when they bathed themselves they permitted no water to fall upon the head or to go above the neck. They also abstained from women. The night which preceded the atemoztli, which they celebrated on the twentieth day of the month, they occupied in cutting the paper, which they gummed with ulli, and which was then called teteuitl. These they attached to long poles, which they planted in the courts of the houses, where they remained during the day of the feast. The paste images they made represented the mountains surrounding the valley of Anahuac. These were placed in the oratory of the house, where they were offered food, and people sat in front of them, serving them in tiny vessels full of food, little pots and vessels of cocoa and food, which were offered four times a night. Nor was an offering of pulque forgotten. They sang all night before these images, and played on the flute. At daybreak the priests asked the people of the house for a tzotzo paztli, or weaver’s bodkin, with which they opened the stomachs of the images. They also beheaded them and drew out their hearts, which they handed to the master of the house in a green porringer. They then stripped them of the paper with which they were decked, which they burned in the court of the house along with the viands offered to the images.” [273] Camargo, who had witnessed the festivals to Tlaloc thirty years before writing his book, states that [274] when the rain failed and the land was parched with drought, great processions were made in which a number of the hairless edible dogs of the country were carried on decorated litters to a place of sacrifice and there killed and their hearts cut out, after which the bodies were eaten with much festivity. This, of course, related to a period subsequent to the Conquest, when human sacrifice was forbidden. He further states that old Aztec priests had informed him that the hearts of the human beings sacrificed to Tlaloc were first held up to the sun, then to the remaining three cardinal points, after which they were burned. Tlaloc was held in high respect, and priests alone had the right to enter his temple. Whoever dared to blaspheme against him was supposed to die suddenly by a thunderbolt, no matter how clear the sky may have been. The priests, he adds, took good care to retard his festivals until they saw indication of coming rain. TEMPLES AND PLACES OF WORSHIP