Note 7 — FIENDS, GHOSTS, AND SPRITES.

An interesting illustration of the tendency of mankind in a state of savageism to attribute striking phenomena to supernatural agency, and deify the means through which they are apparently exhibited, occurred on the march of Cortes from Mexico to Honduras. During a deer-hunt, the horse which Cortes rode was taken ill. "It did not then die, though it would have been better if it had," says the devout but ruthless conqueror, parenthetically. A little while afterwards, having been courteously received by the Itzalan Indians, Cortes "entrusted them with the care of his horse Morgillo, which had been lamed, charging them to take great care of it, and attend to its recovery, as he prized it very highly, and telling them that when he had found the Spaniards he was in search of, he should send for his steed again. It was from no want of care on the part of the Itzaex, but rather from an excess of it, that Morgillo lost his life under their management; for in their anxiety to effect a cure, and regarding the animal as one endowed with reason, they gave him poultry and other meat to eat, and presented him with bunches of flowers, as they were accustomed to do to persons of rank when they were sick; a species of attention somewhat similar to that which the fool laughed at in King Lear, when he speaks of the cockney who for 'a pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.' The consequence of this unaccustomed style of medical treatment was, that Morgillo languished and died, and then a worse evil befell, for, observes the pious Villagutierre, "though some people say Canek burnt his idols in the presence of Cortes, there was in reality no burning of idols or anything else in that city of Tayasal; on the contrary, by leaving the horse with the infidel Itzaex, they obtained a greater and still more abominable idol than the many they had before." The meaning of this sentence is subsequently explained by the worthy chronicler informing us that, on the death of Morgillo, the Itzaex raised its effigy "in stone and mortar, very perfect," and worshipped it as a divinity. It was seated on its hind-quarters, on the floor of one of the temples, rising on its fore legs, with its hind legs bent under it. These barbarians adored it as the god of thunder and thunderbolts, calling him Tzinachac, which means the bride of thunder, or the thunderbolt. They gave it this name from having seen some of the Spaniards who were with Cortes fire their muskets over the horses' heads when they were hunting deer, and they believed the horses were the cause of the noise that was made, which they took for thunder, and the flash of the discharge and the smoke of the gunpowder for a thunderbolt."—Fancourt's History of Yucatan. Athenæum. 1854, p. 109.