Читать книгу The pleasant historie of the conquest of the VVeast India, now called new Spayne - López de Gómara Francisco - Страница 15

A straunge Idol

The God of rayne

The temple is like vnto a square Toure broad at the foote, & steps round about it, & from y^e middest vpward very straight: the top is hollow & couered with straw: it hath foure windowes with frontals and galleries. In y^t holow place is their chappel, wheras their Idols do stand. The temple that stoode by the sea side was such a one, in the which was a maruellous straunge Idol, and differed muche from all the rest, although they haue manye and of diuerse fashions. The body of this Idol was great and hollow, and was fastened in that wall with lime: hee was of earth. And behinde this Idols backe was the Vesterie, where was kept ornaments & other things of seruice for y^e temple. The priests had a little secret dore hard adioyning to y^e Idol, by which dore they crept into y^e hollow Idol, and answered the people y^t came with prayers & peticiōs. And w^t this deceit y^e simple soules beleued al y^t the Idol spake, & honored y^e god more thā al the rest w^t many perfumes & swéete smelles, and offered bread and fruite, with sacrifice of Quayles bloud, and other birds, and dogges, and sometime mans bloud. And through the fame of this Idoll and Oracle, many Pilgrimes came to Acusamil from many places. At the foote of this Temple was a plotte like a Churchyard, well walled and garnished with proper pinnacles, in the middest whereof stoode a Crosse of ten foote long, the which they adored for God of the rayne, for at all times whē they wanted rayne, they would goe thither on Procession deuoutely, and offered to the Crosse Quayles sacrificed, for to appease the wrath that the God séemed to haue agaynste them: and none was so acceptable a sacrifice, as the bloud of that little birde. They vsed to burne certaine swéete gūme, to perfume that God withall, and to besprinckle it with water, and this done, they beléeued assuredly to haue rayne. Suche is the Religiō of those Indians of Acusamil. They could neuer know the original how that God of Crosse came amōgst them, for in all those parties of India, there is no memorie of anye Preaching of the Gospell that had bin at any time, as shall be shewed in another place.