The top of the truncated pyramid on which the idols of Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc were placed was forty feet square, and reached by a stair of a hundred and twenty steps. On this platform, on either hand, at the head of the stairs, stood two sentinel-statues supporting great candlesticks of an extraordinary fashion. And first, from the jasper flags, rose a hump-backed altar of green stone. Opposite and beyond was the chapel wherein behind curtains sat Huitzilopochtli, on a throne supported by a blue globe. From this, supposed to represent the heavens, projected four staves with serpents' heads, by which the priests carried the god when he was brought before the public. The image bore on its head a bird of wrought plumes whose beak and crest were of burnished gold. The feathers expressed horrid cruelty and were made still more ghastly by two stripes of blue one on the brow and the other on the nose. Its right hand leaned as on a staff upon a crooked serpent. Upon the left arm was a buckler bearing five white plumes, arranged in form of a cross; and the hand grasped four arrows venerated as heaven-descended. To the left of this was another chapel, that of Tlaloc. Now these two chapels and idols were the same in every particular. These gods were esteemed brothers--their attributes, qualities, powers, inclinations, service, prayers, and so on, were identical or interchangeable.[VIII-4]
[Sidenote: HUITZILOPOCHTLI AND CAMAXTLI.]
Sahagun says of Huitzilopochtli, that, being originally a man, he was a sort of Hercules, of great strength and warlike, a great destroyer of towns and slayer of men. In war he had been a living fire, very terrible to his adversaries; and the devise he bore was a dragon's head, frightful in the extreme, and casting fire out of its mouth. A great wizard he had been, and sorcerer, transforming himself into the shape of divers birds and beasts. While he lived, the Mexicans esteemed this man very highly for his strength and dexterity in war, and when he died they honored him as a god, offering slaves, and sacrificing them in his presence. And they looked to it that those slaves were well fed and well decorated with such ornaments as were in use, with ear-rings and visors; all for the greater honor of the god. In Tlaxcala also they had a deity, called Camaxtli, who was similar to this Huitzilopochtli.[VIII-5]