In the National Museum in Mexico is an image in the form of a coiled serpent in pyramidal form—its body covered with feathers—carved of basaltic porphyry. This model, which appears in many of the old monuments, is regarded as the symbol of the mysterious Shining Serpent.
Whatever were his serious claims to distinction, his worshippers invested him with wonderful attributes. His sojourn in their land marked its most prosperous period. In his time the seasons were the fairest, the earth the most productive. Flowers blossomed, fruits ripened without the toil of the gardener. The cotton in its pod turned blue, red, or yellow without the trouble of the dyer, so that the fabrics lightly woven and without fatigue took on rich and harmonious tints. The air was continually filled with perfumes and the songs of sweet birds. Every man loved his neighbor, and all dwelt in peace and harmony together. These were the halcyon days of Anahuac. For twenty years the Toltecs knew no disaster, but flourished and spread under the influence of their strange protector. And then, one day the strange god disappeared from among them, descending to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where he bade farewell to the crowd that had followed him, promising, as he did so, that in the fulness of time his descendants, white men like himself, with full beards, should return and instruct them. Then he stepped into a magic bark made of the skins of serpents, and sailed away over an ocean unknown to these simple men towards the fabled land of Tlapalla.
So Lohengrin vanished to the upper air, and as with those he left behind, all their good luck was over for the Toltecs.
They did their best to preserve the memory of Quetzalcoatl. On the top of the pyramid of Cholula, which perhaps their fathers found standing when they reached the haven of their pilgrimage, the Toltecs raised an image of their deity, with features of ebony, although he was white; with a mitre on its head waving with plumes of fire; with a resplendent collar of gold around its neck, turquoise ear-rings, a sceptre all jewelled in one hand, and in the other a strange shield. Such is the description of the Conquistadores, who saw it; and as they destroyed it, and tumbled it down from its lofty site, they should know.
Evil days were coming to the Toltecs.
The traveller in Mexico to-day sees growing all along the sides of the railway huge stiff bunches of the Agave Americana. The leaves are long and pointed with prickles along the edge, growing in a tuft like huge artichokes. Their blue, rather than green, surface has a whitish bloom over it, which makes the plants look as if they had been made of tin and painted some time ago. Sometimes the leaves are very large, and the bunches enormous. When the time comes a stem shoots up from the heart of the tuft to a great height, putting out branches at the top, which blossom in a cluster of yellowish flowers. These branches are symmetrical, and the effect is like a lofty branched candlestick, sometimes forty feet high. The blossoms fade; the dying stalk, like the framework of last year's fireworks, remains a long time; and when these plants, as they often are, are set along the railways, the line of tall bare stems looks not unlike a row of telegraph poles. The blue tin leaves are ever green, and last through many a year.
This agave, or American aloe, is the century-plant, so called from the popular error that it blossoms only once in a hundred years. It is only true so far that each plant blossoms only once and then dies. In tropical regions this process proceeds rapidly; in colder countries, where it is raised artificially, it takes a long time to complete its perfect growth.
The agave is native in the whole region between the tropics of America, where it flourishes from the sandy soil by the sea to table-lands and mountain altitudes. From its natural region it has been transplanted everywhere, and even in cold climates it is cultivated as a green-house plant. In Spain, where it was early transplanted, among the other novelties which the Conquistadores introduced from their new land, it is absolutely at home. Its lofty candelabra are an ornament to Andalusian roadsides, and a barrier for wandering cattle. In Spain it is called pita, which must be a different variety, if not a totally distinct genus from the common plant of Mexico, for the use of its juices for a beverage is totally unknown in the old country, and this certainly would have been discovered there if such properties had not been wanting in the Spanish plant.