mantle the lower slopes of these mountains. Recent enterprise has found a way of making money out of both these old people. Since Popocatapetl produces sulphur, his wife has been called upon for ice, of which she has enough and to spare. The city of Puebla is supplied in this way, and a few years more may see its white mantle dealt out by piecemeal to cool other heated communities farther away.
The Virgin Mary is the tutelar deity of all Mexico; more than two-thirds of the people worship her in the form of an Indian maiden. About ten years after the surrender of Guatemozin, and while the people were still maintaining, though under great difficulties, their old tribal relations, it became evident that the religion which they had been forced to adopt was growing more and more hateful to them, and that unless something was done to win their hearts even the compromise with heathenism which passed under the name of Christianity would be shaken off altogether: Christians had made the name of Christ so odious that his beloved message lost all its power.
In the suburbs of the city was a place whither the Aztecs once resorted to pour their sorrows into the ear of their ancient idol Tomantzin—a sweet word in their ears. The last syllable is a title given to persons of high rank, but the first part of the name has a meaning which is dear to every human heart. It is "Our Mother." Tomantzin attracted the attention of the dignitaries of the Church as they studied the Indian question of that day, and soon she was formally adopted by the conquerors, and with some changes in dress and the development of her history to suit the times she took her place in the Church as the queen of heaven.
