water, going to where the sand begins.

4. Now I go to my beautiful house, there to eat my food, and to drink
of the water, going to where the sand begins.


_Notes._

The god Yacatecutli, whose name means "lord of travelers," or "the lord
who guides," was the divinity of the merchants. Sahagun (_Historia_,
Lib. I, cap. 19) and Duran (_Historia_, cap. 90) furnish us many
particulars of his worship.

The hymn is extremely obscure, containing a number of archaic words, and
my rendering is very doubtful. The writer of the Gloss is, I think, also
at fault in his paraphrase. The general purpose of the hymn seems to be
that of a death-song, chanted probably by the victims about to be
sacrificed. They were given the sacred food to eat, as described by
Duran, and then prepared themselves to undergo death, hoping to go to
"the beautiful house," which the Gloss explains as Tlalocan, the
Terrestrial Paradise.




GLOSSARY.


A