"Aztec" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cipango could rise upon the horizon. But the new continent was vast in extent. It blocked the westward path from pole to pole. With each voyage, too, the resources and the native beauty of the new land became more apparent. The luxuriant islands of the West Indies, and the Aztec empire of Mexico, were already bringing wealth and grandeur to the monarchy of Spain. South of Mexico it had been already found that the great barrier of the continent extended to the cold tempestuous ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... many melodies of the Laureate, nor his versatile mastery, nor his magic, nor his copiousness. He had not the microscopic glance of Mr. Browning, nor his rude grasp of facts, which tears the life out of them as the Aztec priest plucked the very heart from the victim. We know that, but yet Mr. Arnold's poetry has our love; his lines murmur in our memory through all the stress and accidents of life. "The Scholar Gipsy," "Obermann," "Switzerland," the melancholy majesty of the close of "Sohrab and ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... this expedition that put the finishing touch to Philip Steele. He came back a big hearted, clear minded young fellow, as bronzed as an Aztec—a hater of cities and the hothouse varieties of pleasure to which he had been born, and as far removed from anticipation of his father's millions as though they had never been. He possessed a fortune in his own right, but as yet he had found ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... the elaborate ornamentation found in the Aztec ruins in Mexico. The exterior of the house is absolutely plain. It is sometimes seven stories in height and contains over a thousand rooms. In some instances it is built of adobe—blocks of mud mixed with straw and dried in the sun, and in others, of stone covered with mud cement. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Fijian does not feel disgust at the flavor of a well-roasted white sailor; and as long as he does not insist upon our relishing his fare, what right have we to ask him to feel disgusted? When the panther-tailed Aztec priest fattened his prisoner, or carried along the children decked with wreaths, soon to be smothered in their own juice, he cannot have felt disgust, any more than the Malay, of whom Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles tells us, that, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Swastika, or sign, of "good luck to you "—the most ancient symbol of the human race of which there is any record. Professor Wilson's work gives some four hundred illustrations of this curious sign as found in the Aztec mounds of Mexico, the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Troy, and the ancient lore of India and China. One might almost say there is a curious affinity between the Greek cross and Swastika! If, however, we require that the four pieces shall be produced ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... first European to step on the Aztec soil and open an intercourse with the natives. Velasquez, the Governor, at once prepared a larger expedition, choosing as leader or commander an officer who was destined henceforth to fill a much larger place in history than himself, one ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... disclose the history of the dwellers in Anahuac, to make known the annals of the rise and fall of Tlascala, Otumba, Copan, or Papantla. In the great work of Lord Kingsborough are collected many important remains of Mexican and Aztec art and learning; Mr. Prescott has combined with a masterly hand the traditions of the country; and Mr. Stevens and Mr. Squier have done much in the last few years to render us familiar with the more accessible and probably most significant ruins which illustrate the civilization of the race ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... "An Aztec Cacique that I saved from an evil death. He is one of the few I can trust. And here another!" said he, as the door opened and a great blackamoor Centered, bearing a roast with wine, etc., at sight whereof my mouth watered and I ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... saddle-cloths of it, to the Sybarites, impatient of crumpled rose-leaves. Spartan oligarchs and Athenian democrats, Roman patricians and Roman plebeians, Venetian senators and Florentine ciompi, Norman nobles and Saxon serfs, Russian boyars and Turkish spahis, Spanish hidalgos and Aztec soldiers, Carolina slaveholders and New England farmers,—these and a hundred other races or orders have all been parties to the great, the universal struggle which has for its object the acquisition of property, the providing of a shield against the ever-threatening fiend which we call WANT. Property ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... mere symbols by no means told the whole story of the cylinder. The workmanship was archaic, older than any Aztec art Kirby knew, older than Toltec, older far, he ventured to guess, than ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... being the place where several Americans were slaughtered by the Mexicans during the revolution, in which Governor Bent lost his life, heretofore spoken of. On the plain which is contiguous with the south bank of the Arroya Hondo, there are to be found the remains of a large Aztec town, which was, at some remote period, the largest settlement inhabited by that interesting people to be found in northern New Mexico. At the present day, can be seen the size and almost the number of houses which formed the town—which are very numerous. The building material, as here used by the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... nevertheless, one of the handsomest mantles, which, instead of selling it, he converted cleverly enough into an altar-cloth; and for several years afterwards, the communion at Northam was celebrated upon a blaze of emerald, azure, and crimson, which had once adorned the sinful body of some Aztec prince. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Probably the reading "fashes," (troubles), "in the flood" is correct, not "fishes," or "freshes." The mother desires that the sea may never cease to be troubled till her sons return (verse 4, line 2). The peculiar doom of women dead in child-bearing occurs even in Aztec mythology. ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... Aztec ceremonial of lighting a holy fire and communicating it to the multitude from the wounded breast of a human victim, celebrated every 52 years at the end of one cycle and the beginning of another—the constellation of the Pleiades being ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... along the whole northern districts of this continent, and the Indians of the United States, those of Mexico, those of Peru, and those of Brazil? Is there any real connection between the coast tribes of the northwest coast, the mound builders, the Aztec civilization, the Inca, and the Gueranis? It seems to me no more than between the Assyrian and Egyptian civilization. And as to negroes, there is, perhaps, a still greater difference between those of Senegal, of Guinea, and the Caffres and Hottentots, when compared with the Gallahs and ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Guatemala the term boz has the following meanings: "to issue forth; (of flowers) to open, to blow; (of a butterfly) to come forth from the cocoon; (of chicks) to come forth from the egg; (of grains of maize) to burst; (of men) to be born"; in Nahuatl (Aztec), itzmolini signifies "to sprout, to grow, to be born"; in Delaware, an Algonkian Indian dialect, mehittuk, "tree," mehittgus, "twig," mehittachpin, "to be born," seem related, while gischigin means "to ripen, to mature, to ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... century. The ancient Aztecs used the game of ball as a training in warfare for the young men of the nation; and that it was considered of great importance is evident from the fact that the tribute exacted by a certain Aztec monarch from some of the cities conquered by him consisted of balls, and ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we return later. The myths of the origin of things may be studied without a knowledge of the whole Aztec Pantheon. Our authorities, though numerous, lack complete originality and are occasionally confused. We have first the Aztec monuments and hieroglyphic scrolls, for the most part undeciphered. These merely attest ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... which have been named, the fullest limits, in point of antiquity, which have under any circumstances been claimed, we cannot carry even this species of history beyond the year A. D. 1001; leaving 999 years to be accounted for, to the commencement of the Christian era. The Aztec empire which had reached such a point of magnificence when Mexico was first entered by Cortez, in 1519, did not, according to the picture writings and Mexican chronologists, date back farther than 1038, or by another authority, 958. The Toltecs, who ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come, I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indian population—the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North and West—I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... could pass on the last day, where I expected to buy some presents for my mother and sisters. But I was in a pickle as to what to give Esther, and on consulting Miss Jean, I found that motherly elder sister had everything thought out in advance. There was an old Mexican woman, a pure Aztec Indian, at a ranchita belonging to Las Palomas, who was an expert in Mexican drawn work. The mistress of the home ranch had been a good patron of this old woman, and the next morning we drove over to the ranchita, where I secured half ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... was brown—a deep, deep brown; Her hair was darker than her eye; And something in her smile and frown, Curled crimson lip and instep high, Showed that there ran in each blue vein, Mixed with the milder Aztec strain, The vigorous vintage of Old Spain. She was alive in every limb With feeling, to the finger tips; And when the sun is like a fire, And sky one shining, soft sapphire One does not ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... great an antipathy to the beard as the Eastern nations hold it in reverence. This antipathy is derived from the same source as the predilection for flat foreheads, which is seen in so singular a manner in the statues of the Aztec heroes and divinities. Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural physiognomy." See also Westermarck, History of Marriage, p. 261. Ripley (Races of Europe, pp. 49, 202) attaches much importance ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... country and those of another, which rather surprised me. He said nothing of the two great classes, the rulers with much European blood, and the peons, largely or altogether Indian. There must be all sorts of Latin Americans, rich and poor, mixed blood of many strains, Castilian and Aztec and Inca, and whatever other people were here when Columbus set the fashion for American voyages. But this is where this 'missionary father-in-law' hit the heart of the trouble: Latin America has all sorts and conditions of men, but everywhere it has the same church. And it ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... Indians said: "Those who die in their houses go underground, but those who are killed in war go to serve the gods (teotes). When men die, there comes forth from their mouth something which resembles a person, and is called julio (Aztec yuli, 'to live'). This being is like a person, but does not die, and the corpse remains here." The Spanish ecclesiastics inquired whether those who go on high keep the same body, features, and limbs as here below; to which the Indians ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... says Mrs. Baldwin. "I've some wonderful antiquities from a buried Aztec city to show you. When you finish those views"—she glances at me—"you'll find us in the next room. I won't say good-bye to you, Baron; of course, you'll be back. Come, Mrs. Steele"—and they go into an ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... wars, and divide the spoil on a fixed scale. During a century of warfare this alliance was faithfully adhered to and the confederates met with great success. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, just before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Aztec dominion reached across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There was thus included in it territory thickly peopled by various races, themselves warlike, and little inferior to the Aztecs in social organisation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... What do you make of all this, as, especially privileged, you peep over the shoulder of 'Hualpilli the 'tzin, in the portico of his porphyry baths? Nothing, of course. But to the dusky king, skilled in the reading of Aztec hieroglyphics, the message from his Council is plain enough. And this is what he reads: "Most dread and mighty lord, the sun of the world! This is to inform you that the noble young cacique, Ixtlil', at the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last, aloft beneath a canopy, upon the shoulders of men, and flanked by the mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and fro like a Lama, or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most silverly, and still the people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had his blessing. Then he took his state and received homage. After this the choir began to sing a mass of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed the Pope. Marvellous ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... their black shadows by night, and their purple colors by day, waiting for the passing of the Apache and the coming of the white man, who shall dig his canals in those arid plains, and build his cities upon the ruins of the ancient Aztec dwellings. ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... reverence the rattlesnake as grandfather and king of snakes who is able to give fair winds or cause tempest. Among the Hopi (Moqui) of Arizona the serpent figures largely in one of the dances. The rattlesnake was worshipped in the Natchez temple of the sun; and the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl was a serpent-god. The tribes of Peru are said to have adored great snakes in the pre-Inca days; and in Chile the Araucanians made a serpent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... people. I have looked at Quebec and New Orleans, at Washington and at San Francisco, at Cincinnati and St. Louis, and it has been the result of my last conjecture that the seat of power of North America would yet be found in the Valley of Mexico,—that the glories of the Aztec capital would be renewed, and that city would become ultimately the capital of the United States of America. But I have corrected that view, and I now believe that the last seat of power on this great continent will be found somewhere within a radius of not very far from the very ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... in a museum looking at a case of mummies. One of them was marked "Mummy of an Aztec, found in a Cliff Dwelling," and it interested me very much. In size it was that of a small man, and was in a fine state of preservation, with the exception that the bones of the legs were exposed, and more or ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... out, the Aztec Calendar,—a round stone covered with hieroglyphics, which is still preserved and fastened on the outside of the cathedral. We afterwards saw the Stone of Sacrifices, now in the courtyard of the university, with a hollow in the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... those who study graves; their pathetic ending has long been pictured in our country's story as occurring amid the shadows of that dreadful midnight upon the banks of the Ocatahoola, when vengeful Frenchmen put them to the sword. Whence they came, whether from fabled Atlantis, or the extinct Aztec empire of the South, no living tongue can tell; whither fled their remnant,—if remnant there was left to flee,—and what proved its ultimate fate, no previous pen has written. Out from the darkness of the unknown, scarcely more than spectral ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... one of a hundred pictures he had seen of just such curiosities—like the junk which clutters the windows of curio dealers. The figure sat cross-legged with its heavy hands folded in its lap. The face was flat and coarse, the lips thick, the nose squat and ugly. Its carved headdress was of an Aztec pattern. The cheek-bones were high, and the chin thick and receding. The girl pressed close to his side as he held the thing in his lap with an odd mixture of interest ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... real amorous sentiment one would naturally look to the poems of the semi-civilized Mexicans and Peruvians of the South rather than to the savage and barbarous Indians of the North. Dr. Brinton (E. of A., 297) has found the Mexican songs the most delicate. He quotes two Aztec love-poems, the first being from the lips ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... thin veneer of early French culture, who came over from Normandy to better himself after just two generations of Christian apprenticeship. Go where you will, it matters not where you look; from the Aztec in Mexico to the Turk at Constantinople or the Arab in North Africa, the aristocrat belongs invariably to a lower race than the civilised people whom ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... in due time would have his share of his father's three square leagues, whatever incongruity there was between his lively Latin extravagance and Miss Mannersley's Puritan precision and intellectual superiority. They had gone to Mexico; Mrs. Saltillo, as was known, having an interest in Aztec antiquities, and he being utterly submissive to her wishes. For myself from my knowledge of Enriquez's nature, I had grave doubts of his entire subjugation, although I knew the prevailing opinion was that Mrs. Saltillo's superiority ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... adventure in Virginia and the Spanish Main. A Kentish boy is trepanned and carried off to sea, and finds his fill of adventure among Indians and buccaneers. The central episode of the book is a quest for the sacred Aztec temple. The swift drama of the narrative, and the poetry and imagination of the style, make the book in the highest sense literature. It should appeal not only to all lovers of good writing, but to all who care for ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Tisdale said tersely. "Weatherbee told me how it could be traced back through a Spanish mother to some buccaneering adventurer, Don Silva de y somebody, who made his headquarters in Mexico. And that means a trace of Mexican in the race, or at least Aztec." ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East. "My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the Fifth Dalai Lama. A ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to practice Pagan rites, more or less openly. In some of their villages, it is said, the estafa, or sacred fire, is kept burning, and has never been permitted to go out since the time of Montezuma, from whom and his people they believe themselves descended. They are undoubtedly of Aztec race, and sun-worshippers, as were the subjects of the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... appearance of the delineations is such as to lead to the conclusion that the principal pigment or fluid employed in delineation has totally disappeared, carrying with it all underlying colors not of unusual permanence or not worked down with the polishing implement. The Aztec and other races of tropical America used an argillaceous, white pigment in decorating their wares, which has in many cases partially or wholly disappeared, carrying away considerable portions of the colors over which it was laid, while in other cases, and also in this Chiriqui ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... But he is still in the future, and in the future the decision rests. In the mean time we prepare. If may be we shall have such a start that we shall prevent him growing. You know, because he was better skilled in chemistry, knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed the Aztec. May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and its resources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nip the Slav ere he grows a thatch ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... evidences of that wealth which determined the future of their empire. Two years later Hernando Cortez, the greatest of the Conquistadores, was given command of the expedition which ended in the capture of Mexico and the overthrow of the Aztec power. The simple Mexicans, who had never seen a white man, first welcomed Cortez as the long expected Culture God, and the hapless Montezuma gathered as a present for the invader treasure equal in present value to the sum of six and a half million ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... for engines are fragile things, stow the soldiers and civilians and animals in their nests of drawers, burn the trees again—this time they are sweet-bay; and all the joys and sorrows and rivalries and successes of Blue End and Red End will pass, and follow Carthage and Nineveh, the empire of Aztec and Roman, the arts of Etruria and the palaces of Crete, and the plannings and contrivings of innumerable myriads of children, into the limbo of games exhausted ... it may be, leaving some profit, in thoughts widened, ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... Young and Fray Antonio and the boy Pablo—in our search after and finding of the great treasure that was hidden, in a curiously secret place among the Mexican mountains more than a thousand years ago, by Chaltzantzin, the third of the Aztec kings. ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... 100,000 volumes by Genoese crusaders at Tripoli, the book-burning exploits of Torquemada, the bonfire of 80,000 valuable Arabic manuscripts, lighted up in the square of Granada by order of Cardinal Ximenes, and the irreparable cremation of Aztec writings by the first Christian bishops of Mexico. These examples, with perhaps others which do not now occur to us, might be applied in just though ungentle retort by Mahometan doctors. Yet the most direct rejoinder would probably not occur to them: the Alexandrian Library was NOT destroyed by the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... from the Old World. The Incas of Peru. Aztec civilization in Mexico. The earliest centres of civilization in Mexico. The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. The Mound-Builders of the Mississippi Valley. Other types of Indian life. Why did the civilization of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... extent the mythologies, of eras corresponding to the discredited biblical doctrines and legends. It is not, indeed, a literal restoration; but no esoteric interpretation can make it very different from an attempt to rationalize for Europeans ancient Druidism, or for Americans Aztec fables and symbolism. This kind of revival appeals in a certain way to the Rajahs whom English rule has reduced to antiquarian curiosities; they too are survivals from primitive religious and social systems. Colonel Olcott had patrons among the Rajahs ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... strange characters of the Zend, in the Sanscrit, in the effortless creed of Confucius, in the Aztec coloured-string writings and rayed stones, in the uncertain marks left of the sunken Polynesian continent, hieroglyphs as useless as those of Memphis, nothing. Nothing! They have been tried, and were found an illusion. Think then, to-day, now looking from this apex of the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... ancient Aztec [Footnote: The Aztec Indians of Mexico, like various other tribes in Central America and in Peru, had reached in many respects a high degree of civilization before the arrival of Europeans.] confederacy of Mexico, was overthrown ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... towns, and cities have contributed largely to this collection of native antiquities. This is especially true of the Southwest, of Central America, and the Andean region, where the Aztec, the Maya, the Quichuas, the Aymaras, and other highly-organized nations held sway over wide regions. The greatest remains of these people lie in their architecture, the ruins of which astonish the traveller in Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru. Beyond fragments of carving, this, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... covered with high grass and the country was not cut up with ravines and gullies as it is now. This has been brought about through over-stocking the ranges. On the Little Colorado we could cut hay for miles and miles in every direction. The Aztec Cattle Company brought tens of thousands of cattle into the country, claimed every other section, overstocked the range and fed out all the grass. Then the water, not being held back, followed the cattle trails and cut the country up. Later, tens of thousands of cattle died because of ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Eden" of the Pentateuch, the land of Tulan or Tlapallan in Aztec myth, the islands of the Hesperides, the rose garden of Feridun, and a score of other legends attest with what strong yearning man seeks in the past the picture of that perfect felicity ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... and his hair and nails when cut had to be buried under a lucky tree. [315] The Frankish kings were never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood upwards they had to keep it unshorn. The hair of the Aztec priests hung down to their hams so that the weight of it became very troublesome; for they might never crop it so long as they lived, or at least till they had been relieved from their office on the score ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Their son, General William W. Mackall, was a graduate of West Point in the class with General Grant. He served with distinction in the Mexican War and later in the Confederate Army. Shortly after the close of the Civil War, General Grant gave a reception at the White House to the Aztec Society, composed of officers who served in the War with Mexico and their descendants. General Mackall went to it clad in his grey uniform and was most cordially ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... deluge of blood began. If you have read up on the subject at all, you doubtless know how merciless the Spaniards were in their attitude toward the Aztecs. They killed them by thousands, in open battle and by treacherous means, and they tortured Aztec priests to force them to reveal the places where the vessels of gold used in ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... birthday of his eldest granddaughter. Dressed as a fairy, with gossamer wings, a diamond star on her forehead, and a silver wand, she received her guests. Prominent among the young people was the daughter of General Almonte, the Mexican Minister, arrayed as an Aztec Princess. Master Schermerhorn, of New York, was beautifully dressed as an Albanian boy, and Ada Cutts, as a flower-girl, gave promise of the intelligence and beauty which in later years led captive the "Little Giant" of the West. The boys and girls of Henry A. Wise were present, the youngest ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... in Swampville—did something towards heightening my admiration. There was another contrast that had at this time an influence on my heart's inclinings. To an eye, fatigued with dwelling long and continuously on the dark complexions of the south—the olivine hue of Aztec and Iberian skins—there was a relief in the radiance of this carmined blonde, that, apart from her absolute loveliness, was piquant from the novelty and rareness of the characteristic. Additional elements of attraction may have been: ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... guest might be—and the guests were of many nationalities—he could talk with that guest in his own language or in any other language the guest might fancy. I myself was sorely tempted to try him on Coptic and early Aztec; but I held off. My Coptic is not what it once was; and, partly through disuse and partly through carelessness, I have allowed my command of early Aztec to fall off pretty badly ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... with her uncle and there had a most interesting time. She studied Aztec history with her usual thoroughness; so well, indeed, that she became a recognised authority on the subject. She climbed Popocatepetl, the mysterious "Sleeping Woman" that overhands the ancient town, and looked into its crater. Greatly daring, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... that every rattlesnake is an emissary of the devil;[49] "the Piutes of Nevada have a demon deity in the form of a serpent still supposed to exist in the waters of Pyramid Lake;"[50] on the wall of an ancient Aztec ruin at Palenque there is a tablet, on which there is a cross standing on the head of a serpent, and surmounted by a bird. "The cross is the symbol of the four winds; the bird and serpent the rebus of the rain-god, their ruler."[51] The Quiche god, Hurakan, was ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... his horse, Demetrio felt like a new man. His eyes recovered their peculiar metallic brilliance, and the blood flowed, red and warm, through his coppery, pure-blooded Aztec cheeks. ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... Mexico, limited by the traditional and vaguely defined boundaries of an ancient Indian empire or confederation of that name previous to the Spanish conquest. The word is said to signify "country by the waters'' in the old Aztec language; hence the theory that Anahuac was located on the sea coast. One of the theories relating to the location of Anahuac describes it as all the plateau region of Mexico, with an area equal to three-fourths ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... suggestiveness, why should not beauty of the second term be felt in objects without that little bit of intrinsic worth of form? Is not such indeed the fact? What else is the meaning of the story of "Beauty and the Beast"? The squat and hideous Indian idol, the scarabaeus, the bit of Aztec pottery, become attractive and desired for themselves by virtue of their halo of pleasure from dim associations. And all these values are felt as completely OBJECTIFIED, and so fulfill the requirements for "beauty in the second term." That small amount of intrinsic beauty on which to graft the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... held a friendly conference with one cacique, or chief, who seemed desirous of collecting all the information he could about the Spaniards, and their motives in visiting Mexico, that he might transmit it to his master, the Aztec emperor. Presents were exchanged at this interview, and in return for a few glass beads, pins, and such paltry trifles, the Spaniards had received such a rich treasure of jewels and gold ornaments that the general at once sent back one of his ships under the command ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the blood of Aztec lands, Sphinx-like, the tawny herdsman stands, A coiled riata in his hands. Devoid of hope, devoid of fear, Half brigand, and half cavalier— This helot, with imperial grace, Wears ever on his tawny face A sad, defiant look of pain. Left by the fierce iconoclast, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... unsuspected qualities and virtues that simply dazzled Paul as they cropped out upon the surface. In public a Tewana bears herself staidly, carrying a certain dignity of expression that of itself reveals how, of old, her forbears came to place limits to the ambition of the conquering Aztec and made even Spanish dominion little more than an uncomfortable name. Though, through courtship, Andrea's stern composure had shown no trace of a thaw, it yet melted like snow under a south wind when she was ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... full of beans surrounded by a fruity pulp, and whilst the pulp is very pleasant to taste, the beans themselves are uninviting, so that doubtless the beans were always thrown away until ... someone tried roasting them. One pictures this "someone," a pre-historic Aztec with swart skin, sniffing the aromatic fume coming from the roasting beans, and thinking that beans which smelled so appetising must be good to consume. The name of the man who discovered the use of cacao must be written in some early chapter of the history of man, but it is ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... can always be something more—the rest, let us say, was humming-bird. She lived in a grass-roofed /jacal/ near a little Mexican settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. With her lived a father or grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a thousand years old, who herded a hundred goats and lived in a continuous drunken dream from drinking /mescal/. Back of the /jacal/ a tremendous forest of bristling pear, twenty feet high at its worst, crowded almost to its door. It was along the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... ayacachicahualiztli, "the arrangement of rattles," which was a thin board about six feet long and a span wide, to which were attached bells, rattles and cylindrical pieces of hard wood. Shaking this produced a jingle-jangle, agreeable to the native ear. The Aztec bells of copper, tzilinilli, are really metallic rattles, like our sleigh bells. They are often seen in collections of Mexican antiquities. Other names for them were ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... Aztec names are shortened in many instances out of consideration for the patience of the reader; thus 'Popocatapetl' becomes 'Popo,' 'Huitzelcoatl' becomes 'Huitzel,' &c. The prayer in Chapter xxvi. is freely rendered from Jourdanet's French translation of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun's ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... a true political warrior, and his battle for human rights compares with the Oligarchist battle against them as the warfare of Cortes compares with Aztec warfare. He is the man full of strong thought backed by civilization: they, the men trying to keep up their faith in idols, trying to scare with war-paint, trying to startle with war-whoop, trying to vex with showers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... in Italy; but they were admirably arranged in this museum, so that without the eager help of the custodians (which two cents would buy at any turn) we could have found pleasure in them, whereas the Aztec antiquities were mostly copies in plaster and the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... passed, who might have tripped them up or aided in the pursuit, merely fled indoors. The people in Wapping are not always on the side of the pursuer. But the police held on. At last Ben and Toller slipped through the door of an empty house in Aztec Street barely ten yards ahead of their nearest pursuer. Blows rained on the door, but they slipped the bolts, and then fell panting to the floor. When ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... Indian," whispered Belding, hoarsely. "Damn if I don't believe he understood every word Mercedes said. And, gentlemen, don't mistake me, if he ever gets near Senor Rojas there'll be some gory Aztec knife work." ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... merely animal bigness, with no commensurate contents to show for it, and now I detested it more than ever. A physical fooling of turgescence and congestion in that region, such as swimmers often feel, probably increased the impression. I thought with envy of the Aztec children, of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, of Saint Somebody with his head tucked under his arm. Plotinus was less ashamed of his whole body than I of this inconsiderate and stupid appendage. To be sure, I might swim ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the attention to the improvement of the human animal which we do to that of the equine or the porcine, the experiment would not have been left untried so long. In-and-in breeding is a mistake, and can only commend itself, and that for selfish reasons, to the Aztec in physique and the imbecile in mind. The families which take most pride in their purity are the most degenerate; the stock which is the most robust and handsome is that which has in it a liberal infusion of foreign bloods. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... ludicrous phase of his distorted nature. He looked upon me as a paragon of stupidity; and I fear I considered him a piece of personal property, and felt as much pride in the possession as did Barnum in his Aztec children. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... the Petrified Man had been entrusted to an artist devoted to the making of clothing dummies. Instead of an Aztec or Cave Dweller cast of countenance, he had given the Petrified Man the simpering features of the wax figures seen in cheap clothing stores. The result was that, instead of gazing at the Petrified Man with awe as a wonder of nature, ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... thought and instinctive sentiment to which man could attain without supernatural light and help. If this last perhaps is preferable to the others, where was this scaffolding the highest? Over Confucius, or Socrates, or the Scandinavian seer, or Druid or Aztec priest? Was it highest at Athens, because there the great apostle to the Gentiles planted his feet upon it, and said, in the ears of the Grecian sophists, "Him whom ye ignorantly worship declare I unto you?" At that brilliant centre of pagan ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Sagas, and Norse literature is full of a philosophy in a transition state, from physitheism to psychotheism; and, mark! the people discovered in this transition state were inventing an alphabet—they were carving Runes. Then a pure physitheism was discovered in the Aztec barbarism of Mexico; and elsewhere on the globe many people were found in that stage of culture to which this philosophy properly belongs. Thus the existence of physitheism as a stage of philosophy ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... The star of the Aztec dynasty set in blood. In vain did the inhabitants of the conquered city, roused to madness by the cruelty and extortion of the victors, expel them from their midst. Cortez refused to flee farther than the shore; the light of his burning galleys rekindled the desperate valor of his ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... picture writing. Assuming that ideographic pictures made by ancient peoples would be likely to contain representations of gesture signs, which subject is treated of below, it is proper to examine if traces of such gesture signs may not be found in the Egyptian, Chinese, and Aztec characters. Only a few presumptive examples, selected from a considerable number, are now presented in which the signs of the North American Indians appear to be included, with the hope that further investigation by collaborators will establish many more instances ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Cortes and Montezuma met, was the customary exchange of presents. Cortes presented Montezuma with a chain of colored glass beads, and in return the Aztec ruler gave Cortes a house which was large enough to ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... I was soon winding through the gorge-hung village. According to the manager, I had chosen well the time of my coming, for there was "something doing." We strolled about town until he had picked up the jefe politico, a handsome Mexican, built as massive as an Aztec stone idol, under a veritable haystack of hat, who ostensibly at least was a sworn friend of the mining company. With him we returned to the deafening stamp-mill and brought up in the "zinc room," ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... force, strengthened by Indian allies and by ships which he built on the lakes, Cortes, in May, 1521, began the siege of Mexico, as historians call the Aztec capital. Guatemotzin, the last of the Aztec emperors, made a desperate defence, and before its capture the city was almost destroyed. On August 12th the Spaniards made a strong assault, which so weakened the defenders that the following day was to be the last of the once flourishing empire. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... that the Inca kneeled, The Aztec prayed and pled And sacrificed to it, and sealed, With rites that long are dead, The marvels that it once revealed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Lola, with her arm in a sling, began to sit up and to creep about, there was little in her manner to show the wisdom of Jane's cheerful forecast. The girl was still and reserved, as if some ancient Aztec strain predominated in her over all others. She watched the Vigils playing, the kids gamboling, the magpies squabbling; but never a lighter look stirred the chill calm of her little, russet-toned features, or the sombre depths ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... this must certainly have a symbolic interpretation. The concentric spirals with a broken line, the Hopi say, are symbols of the whirlpool, and it is interesting to find in the beautiful plates of Chavero's Antigueedades Mexicanas that the water in the lagoon surrounding the ancient Aztec capital was indicated by the Nahuatl Indians with ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... celebrity were Maximo and Bartola, who for twenty-five years have been shown in America and in Europe under the name of the "Aztecs" or the "Aztec children". They were male and female and very short, with heads resembling closely the bas-reliefs on the ancient Aztec temples of Mexico. Their facial angle was about 45 degrees, and they had jutting lips and little or no chin. They wore their hair in an enormous ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... pursued her inspiration further, but her mind was running along a breathless panorama of Niagara Falls, Great Lakes, Chicago, the farms of the Middle West, Yellowstone Park, geysers, the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista—like a statue at the end of a garden walk—she imagined a great democratic institution of learning where one might conceivably be prepared to solve some of those ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... himself in front of the great glass cabinet, whence thousands of little dogs looked at him out of little black dots of eyes. There were dogs of all nationalities, all breeds, all twisted enormities of human invention. There were monstrous dogs of China and Japan; Aztec dogs; dogs in Sevres and Dresden and Chelsea; sixpenny dogs from Austria and Switzerland; everything in the way of a little dog that man had made. He stood in front of it with almost a doggish snarl on his lips. He had spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds over these futile dogs. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and mysterious name of The Four Fingers. It originally belonged to an Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant—a man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed, and one by one returned to him. The ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... one may well say, "What imaginations those women had!" Tituba, the West Indian Aztec who appears in this social-religious explosion as the chief and original incendiary,— verily the root of all evil,—gave ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... "Aeneid" (Reduced) Desiderius Erasmus (Louvre, Paris) Cervantes William Shakespeare Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon Richard II Geographical Monsters An Astrolabe Vasco da Gama Christopher Columbus (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid) Isabella Ship of 1492 A.D. The Name "America" Ferdinand Magellan Aztec Sacrificial Knife Aztec Sacrificial Stone Cabot Memorial Tower John Wycliffe Martin Luther Charles V John Calvin Henry VIII Ruins of Melrose Abbey Chained Bible St. Ignatius Loyola Philip II The Escorial William the Silent Elizabeth ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... indefinitely remote past. We find these on the Maya side narrated in the sacred book of the Kiches, the Popol Vuh, in the Cakchiquel Records of Tecpan Atitlan, and in various pure Maya sources which I bring forward in this volume. The Aztec traditions refer to the Huastecs, and a brief analysis of them will not be out ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... a nickel-plated handle. It was a beaut, and stood me three fifty. A fellow can never be too careful. Up there you are likely any minute to come face to face with an Apache or some old left-over Aztec ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... I fell in with that arch-devil, that master rogue whose deeds had long been a terror throughout the Main, a fellow more bloody than any Spaniard, more treacherous than any Portugal, and more cruel than any Indian—Inca, Mosquito, Maya or Aztec, and this man an Englishman, and one of birth and breeding, who hid his identity under the name of Bartlemy. I met him first in Tortuga where we o' the Brotherhood lay, six stout ships and nigh four hundred men convened for an expedition ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... to that of Dr. Morse. He was also the scion of a wealthy family who spent much time traveling throughout the world, and in this process becoming fluent in no less than thirty languages. Eventually he encountered an Aztec princess about to be tortured and sacrificed by Navajo Indians; he interrupted this ceremony only to be captured himself, but by virtue of successfully foretelling an eclipse (happily he had his almanac with him) he won release ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... us of the mighty God. Caliban will persist in the belief that the visible system was created in Setebos's moment of being ill at ease and in cruel sportiveness. Nature is a freak of a foul mind. But Caliban's god is not solitary. How hideous were the Aztec gods! They were pictured horrors. Montezuma's gods were Caliban's. Caliban's Setebos was another Moloch of the Canaanites, or a Hindoo Krishna. And the Greek and Norse gods were the infirm shadows of the men who dreamed them. Who says, after familiarizing ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... times the advance guard of Teutonic migration crossed the Rhenish border of Gaul, selected choice sites here and there, after the manner of Ariovistus, and appeared as enclaves in the encompassing Gallic population. While the Anahuac plateau of Mexico formed the center of the Aztec or Nahuatl group of Indians, outlying colonies of this stock occurred among the Maya people of the Tehuantepec region, and in ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... man sat in a room of a stone house in the ancient City of Mexico, capital in turn of Aztec, Spaniard and Mexican. They could see through the narrow windows masses of low buildings and tile roofs, and beyond, the swelling shape of great mountains, standing clear against the blue sky. But they had looked upon them so often ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... melody. Why, here are the mountains! God bless them! Nay, brother, God has blessed them; blessed them with unbounded calm, with boundless strength, with unspeakable peace. You can take your troubles to the mountains. If you are Pueblo, Aztec, you can select some big mountain and pray to it, as its top shows the red sentience of the on-coming day. You can take your troubles to the sea; but the sea has troubles of its own, and frets. There is commerce on the sea, and the people who live near it are fretful, greedy, grasping. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... checked my ticket, and I went out to the Washington plane. It was a luxury ship, a fifty-two-passenger, four-engined DC-6, scheduled to be in the capital one hour after take-off. By morning this plane, the Aztec, ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... followed were filled with weary searching. It was like the time when they had sought for the plain of the great ruined Temple in Mexico, that they might locate the underground city of gold. Only in this case they had no such landmark as a great Aztec ruin ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... 10, nauhxiuhtica, "after four years," appears to refer to the souls of the departed brave ones, who, according to Aztec mythology, passed to the heaven for four years and after that returned to the terrestrial Paradise,—the palace of Tlaloc. (See my paper, The Journey of the Soul, in Proceedings of the Numismatic and ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... almost paralyzed with astonishment when he saw that the vessel was sealed and that it bore on its side, instead of the conventional Aztec design, this inscription ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... bizarre nightmare, no more astonishing than the novels the Lapierres had read. America, they understood, was a land where the rivers were full of gold—a country of bronzed and handsome savages, of birds of paradise and ruined Aztec temples, of vast tobacco fields and plantations of thousands of acres of cotton cultivated by naked slaves, while one lay in a hammock fanned by a "petite negre" and languidly sipped eau sucree. The General had made it all seem ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... bent their growing To the husbandman's caprices. All the beasts have fled to westward; All the reptiles skulk in hiding; All the rivers and the brooklets Have subdued their wild, free rolling. Ancient mounds and Aztec relics, Mural signs and hieroglyphics, Toltec remnants and weird mummies, All the arts and queer devices Of a prehistoric people, Have entombed their sylvan phantoms, In an everlasting Lethe. Now the woods and plains are surveys, Of distinctive tracts and precincts, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... was. If the question had concerned Aztec relics my answer would undoubtedly have been the same. And I watched him, dazedly, while he took down a silver porringer from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for the Race-Week. Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each evening, for the Race-Week. Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week. Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified cheap, for the Race-Week. Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds to ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... built it was the storage place for all kinds of ammunition, Roman spears, shields, breast plates, guns, powder, ammunition of every kind and character, used by Roman Catholics for war, and was probably built by the Aztec Indians who were; under the control of the Spaniards. It was said to be 300 years old when I saw it 53 years ago. It was a two-story structure, built of adobe, or sun-dried brick. The floors of the building were built of some kind of concrete and were hard and glossy. The upper floor was ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... prostrated their own countrymen in the blind fury of the tempest. Those nearest the dike, running their canoes alongside, with a force that shattered them to pieces, leaped on the land, and grappled with the Christians, until both came rolling down the side of the causeway together. But the Aztec fell among his friends, while his antagonist was borne away in triumph to the sacrifice. The struggle was long and deadly. The Mexicans were recognized by their white cotton tunics, which showed faint through ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... about his book, with which I was perfectly charmed. I think his descriptions masterly, his style brilliant, his purpose manly and gallant always. The introductory account of Aztec civilization impressed me exactly as it impressed you. From beginning to end, the whole history is enchanting and full of genius. I only wonder that, having such an opportunity of illustrating the doctrine of visible judgments, he never remarks, when Cortes and his men tumble the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Major, rubbing his nose, 'I can't hardly say. I imagine it's infidel or Aztec or Nonconformist or something like that. There's a church here—a Methodist or some other kind—with a parson named Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to Christianity. He and me don't assimilate except on state occasions. I imagine they worship some kind ...
— Options • O. Henry
... At the very beginning it was used for war, and as its object was to frighten, it became larger and larger in form, and more formidable in sound. In this respect it only kept pace with the drum, for we read of Assyrian and Thibetan trumpets two or three yards long, and of the Aztec war drum which reached the enormous height of ten feet, and could be heard ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... making the ears that heard him to bless him at the same time. After selling his linens at a great advance on the cost price, considering he had only paid his daughter for them, and having given a series of the most successful concerts ever known in those latitudes, Signor G—— set forth for the Aztec City. As the relations of meum and tuum were not upon the most satisfactory footing just then at Vera Cruz, he thought it most prudent to carry his well-won treasure with him to the capital. His progress thither was a triumphal procession. Not Corts, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... raza Andalusiana—and beyond that the Moriscan—but as much of it coming from the ancient blood of Anahuac—possibly from the famed Malinche herself. For the young lady delineated was the Condes Almonte—descended from one of Conquistadors who had wedded an Aztec princess—the beautiful Ysabel Almonte whose charms were at the time the toast of every ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... experiment, as Voltaire has very prettily proved somewhere. Nay, the Mexicans, indeed, were of opinion that the lady at least ought to continue those cares of her person even after marriage. There is extant, in Sahagun's 'History of New Spain,' the advice of an Aztec or Mexican mother to her daughter, in which she says, 'That your husband may not take you in dislike, adorn yourself, wash yourself, and let your garments be clean.' It is true that the good lady adds, 'Do it in moderation; since if every day you are washing yourself and your clothes, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... annually sacrificed in the character of Tezcatlipoca, "the god of gods," after having been maintained and worshipped as that great deity in person for a whole year. According to the old Franciscan monk Sahagun, our best authority on the Aztec religion, the sacrifice of the human god fell at Easter or a few days later, so that, if he is right, it would correspond in date as well as in character to the Christian festival of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer. More exactly he tells us that the sacrifice ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... wonderful countries south of us— blocks of porphyry with quaint grecques and hieroglyphic painting from Mitla, copper axes and pottery from Cuzco, sculptured stones and mosaics, jugs, cups, vases, little gods and great, sacrificial stones, a treasure house of Aztec and Inca lore—enough to keep one occupied for hours ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... people would consider atrocious instances of wrong-doing, might be looked upon as innocent and even estimable by a people with a different moral standard. Religion has much to do with this. The human sacrifices and cannibal feasts of the Aztec Indians, for instance, were regarded by them as good deeds, obligations which they owed to their gods. Yet this people had attained to some of the refined practices and moral ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... roughest of those half explored regions. And what marvels attended the labors of Serra and the other self-sacrificing sons of Saint Francis here! With Junipero Serra at the helm, the good priests learned some of the Aztec dialects in order to convert the savages. Then what followed? With the greatest patience the missionaries acquitted themselves to the task of teaching the classic, cultured language of Spain to these poor aborigines, ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... Like the Aztec Emperors of ancient Mexico, who took a solemn oath to make the Sun pursue his wonted journey, I too have vowed to corroborate and help sustain the Solar System; vowed that by no vexed thoughts of mine, no attenuating doubts, nor incredulity, nor malicious scepticism, nor hypercritical ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... had passed through the deserted grass-grown street, and were again on the prairie, when a shot rang out behind us, the bullet cutting up the dust away to the left. "By G—— he's on the shoot," cried our friend; "ride, boys!" and so we rode. Much has been written and said of cities old and new, of Aztec and Peruvian monuments, but I venture to offer to the attention of the future historian of America this sample of the busted up city of Kearney and its solitary indweller, who had snakes in his boots ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Bibliography). On Buddhism and Christianity see Bohlen's Altes Indien, I. 334 (Weber, Indische Skizzen, p. 92). At a recent meeting of the British Association E.B. Tylor presented a paper in which is made an attempt to show Buddhistic influence on pre-Columbian culture in America. On comparing the Aztec picture-writing account of the journey of the soul after death with Buddhistic eschatology, he is forced to the conclusion that there was direct transmission from Buddhism. We require more proof than Aztec pictures of hell to believe any such theory; and reckon ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... patients to assemble, in the fierce struggle of Chicago. The occasion was innocent enough and stupid enough,—a lecture at the Carsons' by one of the innumerable lecturers to the polite world that infest large cities. The Pre-Aztec Remains in Mexico, Sommers surmised, were but a subterfuge; this lecture was merely one of the signs that the Carsons had arrived at a certain ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... its various parts, divided as they were by blood, by tradition, by tongue, was their common faith. Philip was in more than name the "Catholic King." Catholicism alone united the burgher of the Netherlands to the nobles of Castille, or Milanese and Neapolitan to the Aztec of Mexico and Peru. With such an empire heresy meant to Philip political chaos, and the heresy of Calvin, with its ready organization and its doctrine of resistance, promised not only chaos but active ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... buccaneers, put out in their crazy, ill-found craft, to rob and slay the Spaniard; while the mystery of the unknown still lay upon it; long after the mystery had mostly gone out of it, save for the mystery of the Aztec; it remained the Land of Romance when New England was fully settled and Virginia already an old colony; it was the English Land of Romance while King George's redcoats fought side by side with the colonials, to drive the French out of ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... proudly says that he is a pure-blooded Aztec. His friends claim for him that he has the virtues of an Indian—courage, patience, endurance, and dignified reserve. His enemies, on the other hand, profess to see in him some of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... in the middle of the plain, appeared a ruin of adobe walls, guttered and fissured by the weather. It was undoubtedly a monument of that partially civilized race, Aztec, Toltec, or Moqui, which centuries ago dotted the American desert with cities, and passed away without leaving other record. With his field-glass Thurstane discovered what he judged to be another similar structure crowning ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... gods who are the sun or live in the sun are familiar, and are the centres of myths among most races. I give examples in C. and M. (pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in M. R. R. (i. 124-135, America, Africa, Australia, Aztec, Hervey Islands, Samoa, and so on). Such Nature-myths—of sun, sky, earth—are perhaps universal; but they do not arise from disease of language. These myths deal with natural phenomena plainly and explicitly. The same ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the great water that was without limit and had no end. These Indians, according to their traditions, had once inhabited, as a mighty nation, the country extending from near the city of Mexico to the Rio Grande, and were subjects of the Aztec empire of Mexico. They had been persecuted and oppressed, and determined, in grand council, to abandon the country and seek a home beyond the Mizezibbee, or Parent-of-many-waters, which the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... back now to what little we know from the different sources, of the early history of our continent. When the Spaniards came to Mexico in the early years of the 16th century, Montezuma, an Aztec prince was on the throne. The Aztecs gave themselves out as intruders in Mexico. They were a bloody and warlike race, and though they gave the Spaniards an easy victory it was rather a reception, for they were overawed by superstition as to the invaders. ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... Mauresques from Aragon. To compute the loss of wealth and population inflicted upon Spain by these mad edicts, would be impossible. We may wonder whether the followers of Cortez, when they trod the teocallis of Mexico and gazed with loathing on the gory elf-locks of the Aztec priests, were not reminded of the Torquemada they had left at home. His cruelty became so intolerable that even Alexander VI. was moved to horror. In 1494 the Borgia appointed four assessors, with equal powers, to restrain the blood-thirst of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... religious, even among very low savages, is pure from the magical ghost-propitiating habit. The latter current, mythological, is full of magic, mummery, and scandalous legend. Sometimes the latter stream quite pollutes the former, sometimes they flow side by side, perfectly distinguishable, as in Aztec ethical piety, compared with the bloody Aztec ritualism. Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on the impure stream, the lusts, mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively, or altogether, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... The conquest of the Aztec Empire, with its millions of treasure, by Cortez had already proved the valiancy of Spanish cavaliers. To add to this, the conquest of the Incas by Pizarro and his followers was regarded a miracle of ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the days of Montezuma, the Aztec priests had engrafted upon these simple ceremonies not only a burdensome ceremonial, and a polytheism similar to that of Eastern nations, but, as we have seen, human sacrifices and even cannibalism had become prominent features in religious worship. Throughout the entire ceremonial and ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the Greek. Yet he was far from Greek. "I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard," I have heard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound of strange and ancient races, what with his swarthy skin and the asymmetry and primitiveness of his features. His eyes, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... says I. 'I know I have a front elevation like an Aztec god that guards a buried treasure that never did exist in Jefferson County, Yucatan. But there are compensations. For instance, I am It in this country as far as the eye can reach, and then a few perches and poles. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Notwithstanding Prescott's very brilliant work, we cannot but feel some regret that Irving did not write a Conquest of Mexico. His method, as he outlined it, would have been the natural one. Instead of partially satisfying the reader's curiosity in a preliminary essay, in which the Aztec civilization was exposed, Irving would have begun with the entry of the conquerors, and carried his reader step by step onward, letting him share all the excitement and surprise of discovery which the invaders experienced, and learn of the wonders of the country in the manner most ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... Tonatrish the sun-god, as he was called by the Mexicans, by reason of his long, bright, golden hair. This may have been, probably was, the spear that Alvarado bore when he charged up the steps of the great Teocalli or God's house, rained upon by Aztec darts, driving before him the hordes of heathendom. With this very spear, when the summit was gained, he may have fought in that strange fight, high in air, beheld by all the people of the city and all the allies of Spain. Here stood the Christian cross; there was planted ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang |
