"Mexitli Tetzauhteotl,[1] o-ah! o-ah!" thus sang the pagan,--"the son of the woman[2] of Tula. 'Mother, I will protect you.'[3] The green plume is on his head, the wing of the eagle is on his leg, his forehead is blue like the firmament; he carries a spear and buckler, and with the fir-tree of Colhuacan,[4] he crushes the mountains. 'Mother, I will protect you.' Am not I the son of Mexico? and is not Mexico the daughter of Mexitli? O-ah, o-ah! Mexitli Tetzauhteotl! [Footnote 1: Mexitli, the Terrible God.] [Footnote 2: Coatlicue, or Coatliquay, a religieuse, and sort of lady-abbess, of a mythic era. She was deified as the Goddess of Flowers.--A strange mother for such a son. But the Mexicans carried a sword in one hand, and a flower in the other.] [Footnote 3: The words of the god, yet unborn, when the life of Coatlicue was threatened by her _human_ children.] [Footnote 4: The Hunchbacked Mountain, on the sides of which the Mexicans won their first recorded victory.] "My father ate the heart of Xochimilco! Where was Painalton, the god of the swift foot, when the Miztecas ran to the mountains? 'Fast, warrior, fast!' said Painalton, brother of Mexitli. His footprint is on the snows of Iztaccihuatl, and on the roof of Orizaba.[5] Tochtepec and Chinantla, Matlatzinco and Oaxaca, they shook under his feet, as the hills shake, when Mictlanteuctli, king of hell, groans in the caverns. So my father killed the men of the south, the men of the east and west, and Mexitli shook the fir-tree with joy, and Painalton danced by night among the stars. [Footnote 5: _Pojautecatl_, in Mexican.] "Where is the end of Mexico? It begins in Huehuetapallan in the north, and who knows the place of Huehuetapallan?[6] In the south, it sees the lands of crocodiles and vultures,--the bog and the rock, where man cannot live. The sea washes it on the east, the sea washes it on the west, and that is the end--Who has looked to the end of the waters? It is the land of blossoms,--the land of the tiger-flower, and the cactus-bud that opens at night like a star,--of the flower-of-the-dead,[7] that ghosts come to snuff at, and of the hand-flower,[8] which our gods planted among the hills. It is a land dear to Mexitli. [Footnote 6: Huehuetapallan, was the name of the unknown land, from which came all the hordes of Toltecs and Aztecs. One remarkable circumstance connected with the famous ruined city near to Palenque in Guatemala, seems to have escaped the theorists. It is said that the Indians call this city by the name of Huehuetapallan. It is far to the _south_ of Mexico.] [Footnote 7: The Dahlia.] [Footnote 8: _Arbol de las Manitas_--the marvellous tree, of which, besides that in the present Botanic Garden, there are supposed to be but two more specimens in the land, unless known only to the Indians.]