proceeded with them, peopling the world, and collecting along with them other people whom they chanced to find. They further add that, journeying in this manner with these people, they arrived at a certain mountain, which not being able to pass, they feign that they bored a subterranean way through it and so passed. Others say that they remained shut up and that they were transformed into stones, and other such fables.”
The first part of this myth is, of course, merely ætiological of the practice of making vows to Xipe to capture and immolate an enemy in his honour, as, we shall see in the paragraph dealing with his festivals, was done on that occasion. But I would point out that it possesses some importance as providing further evidence regarding the existence of the ascetic life in Mexico, most of the myths dealing with which, like that under discussion, are connected with the Toltecs, the people of Quetzalcoatl. Xipe, who plays the part of the Toltec Jeremiah, is here the subject of a tale which is also recounted of Tezcatlipocâ, with whom he is frequently confounded or identified, perhaps because both were great gods of the sacrificial stone, or for the reason that practically all Mexican cults tended to gravitate towards Tezcatlipocâ in late times.
That portion of the story which details the burial en masse of the Toltecs is, of course, the widespread tale of the disappearance of the old hero-race