(M233) This was the ordinary mode of sacrificing the human representatives of the Fire-god every fourth year. But in Quauhtitlan, a city distant four leagues from the city of Mexico, the custom was different. On the eve of the festival two women were beheaded on the altar of the temple and afterwards flayed, faces and all, and their thigh bones extracted. Next morning two men of high rank clothed themselves in the skins, including the skins of the women’s faces, which they put over their own; and thus arrayed and carrying in their hands the thigh bones of the victims they came down the steps of the temple roaring like wild beasts. A vast crowd of people had assembled to witness the spectacle, and when they saw the two men coming down the steps in the dripping skins, brandishing the bones, and bellowing like beasts, they were filled with fear and said, “There come our gods!” Arrived at the foot of the staircase these human gods engaged in a dance, which they kept up for the rest of the day, never divesting themselves of the bloody skins till the festival was over.(693) (M234) The theory that the custom of wearing the skin of a flayed man or woman and personating a god in that costume is intended to represent the resurrection of the deity derives some support from the class of persons who made a vow to masquerade in the skins. They were, as we have seen, especially men who suffered from diseases of the skin and the eyes: they hoped, we are told, by wearing the skins to be cured of their ailments, and the old Spanish monk who records the belief adds dryly that some were cured and some were not.(694) We may conjecture that by donning the skins of men who had acted the part of gods they expected to slough off their own diseased old skins and to acquire new and healthy skins, like those of the deities. This notion may have been suggested to them by the observation of certain animals, such as serpents and lizards, which seem to renew their youth by casting their skins and appear refreshed and renovated in new integuments. That many savages have noticed such transformations in the animal world is proved by the tales which some of them tell to account for the origin of death among mankind. For example, the Arawaks of British Guiana say that man was created by a good being whom they call Kururumany. Once on a time this kindly creator came to earth to see how his creature man was getting on. But men were so ungrateful that they tried to kill their Maker. Hence he took from them the gift of immortality and bestowed it upon animals that change their skins, such as snakes, lizards, and beetles.(695) Again, the Tamanachiers, an Indian tribe of the Orinoco, tell how the creator kindly intended to make men immortal by telling them that they should change their skins. He meant to say that by so doing they should renew their youth like serpents and beetles. But the glad tidings were received with such incredulity by