Endowed with powers which in a semicivilized state of society must
operate powerfully on the mind; at ease and freedom alike on the land,
in the water, or among the trees; at once wily, daring, and
irresistible in their attack, graceful in their movements, and
splendid in their coloring--that such creatures, to be both dreaded
and admired, should become the subject of superstitious reverence, is
scarcely to be wondered at. The ancient Mexicans regarded the boa as
sacred; they viewed its actions with religious horror; they crouched
beneath the fiery glances of its eyes; they trembled as they listened
to its long-drawn hiss, and from various signs and movements predicted
the fate of tribes or individuals, or drew conclusions of guilt or
innocence. The supreme idol was represented encircled and guarded by
sculptured serpents, before which were offered human sacrifices.


"On a blue throne, with four huge silver snakes,
As if the keepers of the sanctuary,
Circled, with stretching necks and fangs display'd,
Mexitli sate: another graven snake
Belted with scales of gold his monster bulk."

It is probably of the boa constrictor, the emperor, the devin, that
Hernandez writes, under the name of Temacuilcahuilia, so called from
its powers, the word meaning a fighter with five men. It attacks, he
says, those it meets, and overpowers them with such force, that if it
once coils itself around their necks it strangles and kills them,
unless it bursts itself by the violence of its own efforts; and he
states that the only way of avoiding the attack is for the man to
manage in such a way as to oppose a tree to the animal's constriction,