by some passing monk, was made the goddess of New Spain, and clothed with three petticoats, one adorned with pearls, one with rubies, and one with diamonds, at an estimated cost of $3,000,000. Which was the least objectionable superstition?
We have been taught to look upon the worship of the Aztecs as monstrous; but the witnesses against them were themselves monsters, who were seeking for a pretense to excuse their own brutality in reducing the Indians to the most debasing slavery, while they appropriated to their own use the best looking of the squaws, and kept such swarms of supernumerary wives that each Spaniard had to brand them with a red-hot iron in order to know his own family. The fathers of the present mixed-breed population of Mexico tell us that the Aztecs offered human sacrifices, and feasted upon human flesh. They hope, by dwelling upon the enormities of the Indians, to excuse their own still more detestable crimes. For three centuries their stories were uncontradicted, and they have been received as historical verities. But the character of the witnesses warrants us in receiving their statements with some incredulity.