CHAPTER III

of paper resembling pasteboard, twenty fathoms long, one fathom broad, and a little less than an inch thick; it was supported by spear-shafts arranged in pairs of one shaft above and one below the paper, while persons on either side of the paper held one of these pairs in one hand. When the procession, with dancing and singing, reached the cu to be ascended, the platform was carefully and cautiously hoisted up by cords attached to its four corners, the image was set on a seat, and those who carried the paper rolled it up and set down the roll before the bust of the god. It was sunset when the image was so set up; and the following morning everyone offered food in his own house before the image of Uitzilopochtli, incensing also such images of the other gods as he had, and then went to offer quails’ blood before the image set up on the cu. The king began, wringing off the heads of four quails; the priests offered next, then all the people; the whole multitude carrying clay fire-pans and burning copal incense of every kind, after which everyone threw his live coals on a great hearth in the temple yard. The virgins painted their faces, put on their heads garlands of parched maize, with strings of the same across their breasts, decorated their arms and legs with red feathers, and carried black paper flags stuck into split canes. The flags of the daughters of the nobles were not of paper, but of a thin cloth called canauac, painted with vertical black stripes. These girls, joining hands, danced round the great hearth, upon or over which, on an elevated place of some kind, there danced, giving the time and step, two men, having each a kind of pine cage covered with paper flags on