Then suddenly the heavens opened. A huge mass of flaming rock fell with irresistible force upon the proud pyramid and those that built it. The upper portion crashed down in ruins, carrying to destruction thousands of the laborers and the master-builder Xelhua himself.
Wherefore men doubted no longer that there were eternal powers on high. The fragment of the building which remained was dedicated thenceforth to the Fair God, Quetzal. And down to the time of that
worthy Dominican, Pedro de los Rios, the priests showed to unbelievers a portion of the very thunderbolt, a stone shaped like a toad, which had confounded the mad presumption of Xelhua; while the dancing celebrants sang in their festival hymn the tale of these happenings, that reverence might no more perish among men.
Moreover, since that day the tribes have no longer spoken the same tongue, but each has a language of its own, unintelligible to the others.
CHAPTER VI
THE FATAL PRIDE OF VUKUB
The Maya race, now living mostly in Guatemala and Yucatan, seem to be the descendants of a people whose civilization was old long before the appearance of those Aztecs whom Cortes found ruling in Mexico.
Their wise men, like those of Cholula, knew from their fathers that there was a time when the earth had not yet recovered from the effects of the flood, and when mighty giants walked abroad. Nay, more, they took the pains to set down the facts in the only native American book we have which dates back to the times before Columbus—the Popol Vuh, or Collection of Written Leaves.