Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/112

Wood and water were put beside him; a costly mask covered his face, and a green stone cut in the shape of a heart was placed between the cold, mute lips. A little dog was provided, to guide his master through the perils of the way, and plenty of paper passes were furnished for the time of need. The priests spoke of a wonderful place where mountains strike together, the road being guarded by "the great snake and great alligator, the eight deserts and eight hills." In earlier days a crowd of wives and servants stood by. The priests exhorted them to be faithful in the next world to their departed master, after which they were killed, and burned also with his ashes. At the funeral of Nezhualpilli, the son of Hungry Fox (a. d. 1515), just before the Spaniards came, it is said that two hundred male and one hundred female attendants thus suffered. With the bodies were burned, in a vast funeral pyre, quantities of rich stuffs, jewels, weapons, ornaments and costly incense—everything, in fact, needed to keep up the dead man's state in the next life. So far as possible, the other classes aped this horrible fashion. Some made wooden statues of their friends, with hollow places in the necks, in which their ashes were put. These were kept as family idols.