destroy humanity. (p. 54.) At the center of the recessed wall are doors
of the deity's shaded abode, a guardian on either side. In the friezes
naked humanity moves ever onward, striving to reach the home of the god.
The figures, in full relief, are splendid in their grace and vigor. Here
are men and women whom nothing can hold back; here are those who must be
pushed along, some who linger for love, others for worldly goods; but
all, the strong and the faint, the eager and the tardy, move forward
irresistibly to their destiny.

In Wait's "The Stories of El Dorado," the following account is given of
this aboriginal myth of an expected Indian Messiah, El Hombre Dorado,
the Gilded Man, as the Spaniards interpreted the native words,--which
played a fateful part in the history of the primitive races of Spanish
America:

"No words incorporated into the English language have been fraught with
such stupendous consequences as El Dorado. When the padres attempted to
tell the story of the Christ, the natives exclaimed 'El Dorado'--the
golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal
meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don
Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on
one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El
Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an
inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed
himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust,
must always remain one of the blackest pages in the history of the white
race. The great heart of humanity will ever ache with sympathy for the
melancholy and pitiful end of the natives, who at the time of the
conquest of Mexico were confidently expecting the return of the mild and
gentle Quetzalcoatl,--the Mexican variant of this universal myth. * * *