ertain would go clean through a man, and knives
which would take his arm off, bone and all. I want you to remember these
glass weapons, for Cortez's Spaniards had cause enough to remember them
when they came to fight. Gunpowder, of course, they knew nothing of, nor
of horses or cattle either. They had no beasts of draught; and all the
stones and timber for their magnificent buildings were carried by hand.
But they were first-rate farmers; and for handicraft work, such as
pottery, weaving, and making all kinds of ornaments, I can answer for it,
for I have seen a good deal of their work--they had not then their equals
in the world. They made the most beautiful dresses out of the feathers
of birds--parrots, humming birds, and such like, which fill the forests
in hot countries. And what was more, their country abounded in gold and
jewels, and they knew how to work them, just as well as we do. They
could work gold into the likeness of flowers, of birds with every feather
like life, and into a thousand trinkets. Their soil was most fruitful of
all that man can want--there was enough of the best for all to eat; and
altogether there never was a richer, and need never have been a happier
people, if they had but been good. But that was just what they were not.
A bad lot they were, cruel and blood-thirsty, continually at war with
each other; and as for cruelty, just take this one story. At the opening
of a great temple to one of their idols in 1486, about thirty years
before the Spaniards came, they sacrificed to the idol seventy-thousand
human beings!

This offering in sacrifice of human beings to their idols was their
regular practice. They got these poor creatures by conquering all the
nations round, and carrying back their prisoners to sacrifice; and if
they failed, they took poor people of their own, for blood they and their
false gods must have. Men, and sometimes women and children, were
murdered by them in their temples, often with the most horrible tortures,
to the number, I am afraid there is no doubt of it, of many thousands
every year; and their flesh afterwards cooked delicately, was eaten as a
luxury by people who, as far as outward show went, were just as fine
gentlemen and ladies as there are now.

When the Spaniards got into Mexico, they found the walls of the temples
crusted inches thick in blood, the altars of the idols heaped with
smoking human hearts, and whole houses full of skulls. They counted i