Digitale Ausgabe

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• These volumes finish the extensive seriesof M. de Humboldt, which togetherform fourteen volumes in the Frenchoriginal. In these dissertations he exhi-bits the varied researches of the learnedantiquary, physiologist, naturalist, astro-nomer, and geologist. The entire circleof literature exhibits nothing more pro-found or interesting than several of theseessays. We have endeavored to intro-duce all the passages which bear separa-tion from the context, to the notice andadmiration of our readers; and we haveno doubt but they will partake of ourpleasure in the perusal.

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old and new worlds. NEITHER an attentive examina-tion of the geological constitu-tion of America, nor reflections onthe equilibrium of the fluids, that arediffused over the surface of the globe,lead us to admit, that the new conti-nent emerged from the waters at alater period than the old: we discernin the former the same succession ofstony strata, that we find in our ownhemisphere; and it is probable, that,in the mountains of Peru, the granites,the micaceous schists, or the differentformations of gypsum, and gritstone,existed originally at the same periodsas the rocks of the same denominationsin the Alps of Switzerland. Thewhole globe appears to have undergonethe same catastrophes. At a heightsuperior to that of Mount Blanc, onthe summit of the Andes, we find pe- |609| |Spaltenumbruch|trified sea shells; fossil bones of ele-phants are spread over the equinoctialregions; and, what is very remarkable,they are not discovered at the feet ofthe palm trees in the burning plains ofthe Orinoco, but on the coldest andmost elevated regions of the Cordil-leras. In the new world, as well as inthe old, generations of species longextinct have preceded those, whichnow people the earth, the waters, andthe air. man. There is no proof, that the existenceof man is much more recent in Ame-rica than in the other continent.Within the tropics, the strength ofvegetation, the breadth of rivers, andpartial inundations have presentedpowerful obstacles to the migration ofnations. The extensive countries ofthe north of Asia are as thinly peopledas the savannahs of New Mexico andParaguay; nor is it necessary to sup-pose, that the countries first peopledare those, which offer the greatest massof inhabitants. The problem of thefirst population of America, is no morethe province of history, than the ques-tions on the origin of plants and ani-mals, and on the distribution of or-ganic germs, are that of naturalscience. History, in carrying us backto the earliest epochas, instructs usthat almost every part of the globe isoccupied by men who think themselvesaborigines, because they are ignorantof their origin. Among a multitudeof nations, who have succeeded, orhave been incorporated with each other,it is impossible to discover with pre-cision, the first basis of population,that primitive stratum beyond whichthe region of cosmogonical traditionbegins. The nations of America, exceptthose which border on the polar circle,form a single race, characterized bythe formation of the scull, the colourof the skin, the extreme thinness ofthe beard, and straight and glossy hair.The American race bears a very strikingresemblance to that of the Mongulnations, which include the descendantsof the Hiong-Nu, known heretoforeby the name of Huns, the Kalkas, theKalmucks, and the Burats. It has beenascertained, by late observations, thatnot only the inhabitants of Unalashka,but several tribes of South America,indicate, by the osteological charactersof the head, a passage from the Ame- |Spaltenumbruch|rican to the Mongul race. When weshall have more completely studied thebrown men of Africa; and that swarmof nations, who inhabit the interiorand north-east of Asia, and who arevaguely described by systematic tra-vellers under the name of Tartars andTschoudes, the Caucasian, Mongul,American, Malay, and Negro races,will appear less insulated, and we shallacknowledge, in this great family ofthe human race, one single organictype, modified by circumstances whichperhaps will ever remain unknown. Though the nations of the new con-tinent are connected by intimate ties,they exhibit, in the mobility of theirfeatures, in their complexions, tannedin a greater or less degree, and in theirstature, a difference as remarkable asthe Arabians, the Persians, and Scla-vonians, who are all of the Caucasianrace. The hordes who wander alongthe burning plains of the equinoctialregions have, however, no darkerskins than the mountaineers of thetemperate zone; whether it be that inthe human race, and in the greaterpart of animals, there is a certain pe-riod of organic life, beyond which theinfluence of climate and food have noeffect, or that the deviation from theprimitive type becomes apparent onlyafter a long series of ages. Besides,every thing concurs to prove, that theAmericans, as well as the people of theMongul race, have less flexibility oforganization than the other nations ofAsia and Europe. languages. The number of languages, whichdistinguish the different native tribes,appears still more considerable in thenew continent than in Africa, where,according to the late researches ofMessrs. Seetzen and Vater, there areabove one hundred and forty. In thisrespect, the whole of America re-sembles Caucasus, Italy before theconquest of the Romans, Asia Minorwhen that country contained, on asmall extent of territory, the Cilici-ans of Semitic race, the Phrygians ofThracian origin, the Lydians, andthe Celts. The configuration of thesoil, the strength of vegetation, theapprehensions of the mountaineersunder the tropics of exposing them-selves to the burning heat of theplains, are obstacles to communica-tion, and contribute to the amazingvariety of American dialects. This |610|variety, it is observed, is more res-trained in the savannahs and forests ofthe north, which are easily traversedby the hunter, on the banks of greatrivers along the coast of the ocean,and in every country where the Incashad established their theocracy by theforce of arms. When it is asserted, that severalhundred languages are found in a con-tinent, the whole population of whichis not equal to that of France, we re-gard as different those languages, whichbear the same affinity to each other, Iwill not say as the German and theDutch, or the Italian and the Spanish,but as the Danish and the German,the Chaldean and the Arabic, theGreek and the Latin. In proportionas we penetrate into the labyrinth ofAmerican idioms, we discover, thatseveral are susceptible of being classedby families, while a still greater num-ber remain insulated, like the Biscayanamong European, and the Japaneseamong Asiatic languages. This se-paration may, however, be only ap-parent; for we may presume that thelanguages, which seem to admit of noethnographical classification, have someaffinity, either with other languageswhich have been for a long time ex-tinct, or with the idioms of nationswhich have never yet been visited bytravellers. The greater part of the Americanlanguages, even such as have the samedifference with each other as the lan-guages of Germanic origin, the Celticand the Sclavonian, bear a certainanalogy in the whole of their organi-zation: for instance, in the compli-cation of grammatical forms, in themodification of the verb according tothe nature of its syntax, and in thenumber of additive particles (affixaet suffixa). This uniform tendency ofthe idioms betrays, if not a commu-nity of origin, at least a great analogyin the intellectual dispositions of theAmerican tribes, from Greenland tothe Magellanic regions. Investigations made with the mostscrupulous exactness, in following amethod which had not hitherto beenused in the study of etymologies, haveproved, that there are a few words thatare common in the vocabularies of thetwo continents. In eighty-three Ame-rican languages, examined by Messrs.Barton and Vater, one hundred andseventy words have been found, the |Spaltenumbruch|roots of which appear to be the same;and it is easy to perceive, that thisanalogy is not accidental, since it doesnot rest merely on imitative harmony,or on that conformity in the organs,which produces almost a perfect iden-tity in the first sounds articulated bychildren. Of these one hundred andseventy words, which have this con-nexion with each other, three fifthsresemble the Mantchou, the Tongouse,the Mongul, and the Samoyede; andtwo fifths the Celtic and Tschoud, theBiscayan, the Coptic, and the Congolanguages. These words have beenfound by comparing the whole of theAmerican languages with the whole ofthose of the old world; for hithertowe are acquainted with no Americanidiom, which seems to have an exclu-sive correspondence with any of theAsiatic, African, or European tongues.What some learned writers have as-serted from abstract theories, respect-ing the pretended poverty of all theAmerican languages, and the extremeimperfection of their numerical sys-tem, is as doubtful as the assertionswhich have been made respecting theweakness and stupidity of the humanrace throughout the new continent,the stunted growth of animated na-ture, and the degeneration of thoseanimals, which have been transportedfrom one hemisphere to the other. origin. Though no traditions point out anydirect connexion between the nationsof North and South America, theirhistory is not less fraught with analo-gies in the political and religious re-volutions, from which dates the civi-lization of the Aztecks, the Muyscas,and the Peruvians. Men with beards,and with clearer complexions than thenatives of Anahuac, Cundinamarca,and the elevated plain of Couzco,make their appearance without any in-dication of the place of their birth;and, bearing the title of high priests,of legislators, of the friends of peaceand the arts, which flourish under itsauspices, operate a sudden change inthe policy of the nations, who hailtheir arrival with veneration. Quet-zalcoatl, Bochica, and Manco Capac,are the sacred names of these myste-rious beings. Quetzalcoatl, clothedin a black sacerdotal robe, comes fromPanuco, from the shores of the Gulfof Mexico; Bochica, the Boudha ofthe Muyscas, presents himself on the |611| |Spaltenumbruch|high plains of Bogota, where he ar-rives from the savannahs, whichstretch along the east of the Cordil-leras. The history of these legislators,which I have endeavoured to unfold inthis work, is intermixed with miracles,religious fictions, and with those cha-racters which imply an allegoricalmeaning. Some learned men have pre-tended to discover, that these strangerswere shipwrecked Europeans, or the de-scendants of those Scandinavians, who,in the eleventh century, visited Green-land, Newfoundland, and perhapsNova Scotia; but a slight reflectionon the period of the Tolteck migra-tions, on the monastic institutions,the symbols of worship, the calendar,and the form of the monuments ofCholula, of Sogamozo, and of Couzco,leads us to conclude, that it was notin the north of Europe that Quetzal-coatl, Bochica, and Manco Capacframed their code of laws. Everyconsideration leads us rather towardsEastern Asia, to those nations whohave been in contact with the inhabi-tants of Thibet, to the Shamanist Tar-tars, and the bearded Ainos of theisles of Jesso and Sachalin. pyramid of cholula. Among those swarms of nations,which, from the seventh to the twelfthcentury of the christian era, succes-sively inhabited the country of Mexi-co, five are enumerated; the Toltecks,the Cicimecks, the Acolhuans, theTlascaltecks, and the Aztecks, who,notwithstanding their political divi-sions, spoke the same language, fol-lowed the same worship, and builtpyramidal edifices, which they regardedas teocallis, that is to say, the houses oftheir gods. These edifices were all ofthe same form, though of very dif-ferent dimensions; they were pyra-mids, with several terraces, and thesides of which stood exactly in thedirection of the meridian, and the pa-rallel of the place. The teocalli was raised in the midst of a squareand walled enclosure, which, some-what like the περιβολος of the Greeks,contained gardens, fountains, thedwellings of the priests, and some-times arsenals; since each house of aMexican divinity, like the ancienttemple or Baal Berith, burnt by Abi-melech, was a strong place. A greatstaircase led to the top of the trun-cated pyramid, and on the summit ofthe platform were one or two chapels,built like towers, which contained the |Spaltenumbruch| colossal idols of the divinity, to whomthe teocalli was dedicated. This partof the edifice must be considered asthe most consecrated place; like theναος, or rather the ςεκος, of the Gre-cian temples. It was there, also, thatthe priests kept up the sacred fire.From the peculiar construction of theedifice we have just described, thepriest who offered the sacrifice wasseen by a great mass of the people atthe same time: the procession of the teopixqui, ascending or descending thestaircase of the pyramid, was beheldat a considerable distance. The in-side of the edifice was the burial placeof the kings and principal personagesof Mexico. It is impossible to readthe descriptions, which Herodotus andDiodorus Siculus have left us, of thetemple of Jupiter Belus, without beingstruck with the resemblance of thatBabylonian monument to the teo-callis of Anahuac. The teocalli of Mexico was de-dicated to Tezcatlipoca, the first ofthe Azteck divinities after Teotl, whois the supreme and invisible being;and to Huitzilopochtli, the god ofwar. It was built by the Aztecks, onthe model of the pyramids of Teoti-huacan, six years only before the dis-covery of America by ChristopherColumbus. This truncated pyramid,called by Cortez the principal temple,was ninety-seven metres in breadth atits basis, and nearly fifty-four metresin height. It is not astonishing, thata building of these dimensions shouldhave been destroyed a few years afterthe siege of Mexico. In Egypt therescarcely remains any vestiges of theenormous pyramids, which toweredamidst the waters of the lake Mœris,and which Herodotus says were orna-mented with colossal statues. Thepyramids of Porsenna, of which thedescription seems somewhat fabulous,and four of which, according to Varro,were more than eighty metres in height,have equally disappeared in Etruria. The greatest, most ancient, and mostcelebrated of the whole of the pyrami-dal monuments of Anahuac is the teo-calli of Cholula. It is called in the pre-sent day the Mountain made by thehand of Man (monte hecho a manos). Ata distance it has the aspect of a naturalhill covered with vegetation. The great teocalli of Cholula, calledalso the Mountain of unbaked bricks (tlal-chihualtepec), had an altar on its top,dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, the god of |612| |Spaltenumbruch|the air. This Quetzalcoatl, whose namesignifies serpent clothed with greenfeathers, from coatl, serpent, and quet-zalli, green feathers, is the most mys-terious being of the whole Mexicanmythology. He was a white and beard-ed man, like the Bochica of the Muys-cus. He was high priest of Tula (Tol-lan,) legislator, chief of a religious sect,which, like the Sonyasis and the Boudd-hists of Indostan, inflicted on them-selves the most cruel penances. Heintroduced the custom of piercing thelips and the ears, and lacerating the restof the body with the prickles of theagave leaves, or the thorns of the cac-tus; and of putting reeds into thewounds, in order that the blood mightbe seen to trickle more copiously. Another very remarkable traditionstill exists among the Indians of Cho-lula, according to which the great py-ramid was not originally destined toserve for the worship of Quetzalcoatl.After my return to Europe, on exami-ning at Rome the Mexican manuscriptin the Vatican library, I found, thatthis same tradition was already record-ed in a manuscript of Pedro de LosRios, a Dominican monk, who, in 1566,copied on the very spot all the hiero-glyphical paintings he could procure.“Before the great inundation whichtook place four thousand eight hun-dred years after the creation of theWorld, the country of Anahuac wasinhabited by giants (tzocuillixeque).All those who did not perish weretransformed into fishes, save seven,who fled into caverns. When thewaters subsided, one of these giants,Xelhua, surnamed the architect, wentto Cholollan; where, as a memorialof the mountain Tlaloc, which hadserved for an asylum to himself andhis six brethren, he built an artificialhill in form of a pyramid. He orderedbricks to be made in the province ofTlamanalco, at the foot of the Sierraof Cocotl, and to convey them to Cho-lula he placed a file of men, who pas-sed them from hand to hand. Thegods beheld with wrath this edifice,the top of which was to reach theclouds. Irritated at the daring at-tempt of Xelhua, they hurled fire onthe pyramid. Numbers of the work-men perished; the work was discon-tinued, and the monument was after-wards dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, thegod of the air.” The size of the platform of the pyra- |Spaltenumbruch|mid of Cholula, on which I made agreat number of astronomical observa-tions, is four thousand two hundredsquare metres. From it the eye ran-ges over a magnificant prospect; Popo-catepetl, Iztaccihuatl, the peak of Ori-zaba, and the Sierra de Tlascalla, fa-mous for the tempests which gatheraround its summit. We view at thesame time three mountains higher thanMount Blanc, two of which are stillburning volcanoes. A small chapel,surrounded with cypress, and dedicatedto the Virgin de los Remedios, has suc-ceeded to the temple of the god of theair, or the Mexican Indra. An eccle-siastic of the Indian race celebratesmass every day on the top of this an-tique monument. No one of the ancient writers, neitherHerodotus nor Strabo, Diodorus norPausanias, Arrian nor Quintus Curtius,asserts, that the temple of Belus waserected according to the four cardinalpoints, like the Egyptian and Mexi-can pyramids. Pliny observes only,that Belus was considered as the in-ventor of astronomy: Inventor hic fuitsideralis scientiœ. Diodorus relates, thatthe Babylonian temple served as anobservatory to the Chaldeans. “Itmust be admitted,” says he, “thatthis building was of an extraordinaryheight, and that here the Chaldeansmade their observations on the stars,the rising and setting of which mightbe exactly perceived, on account ofthe elevation of the edifice.” TheMexican priests, (teopixqui) made ob-servations also on the stars from thesummit of the teocallis; and an-nounced to the people, by the soundof the horn, the hours of the night.These teocallis were built in the in-terval between the epocha of Mahometand the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella;and we cannot observe without asto-nishment, that American edifices, theform of which is almost the same asthat of one of the most ancient monu-ments on the banks of the Euphrates,belong to times so near our own. volcano of cotopaxi. Cotopaxi is the loftiest of those vol-canoes of the Andes, which at recentepochs have undergone eruptions. Itsabsolute height is five thousand sevenhundred and fifty-four metres (twothousand nine hundred and fifty-twotoises); it is double that of Canigou;and consequently eight hundred me-tres higher than Vesuvius would be, |613| |Spaltenumbruch| were it placed on the top of the Peakof Teneriffe. Cotopaxi is also themost dreadful volcano of the kingdomof Quito, and its explosions the mostfrequent and diastrous. The mass ofscoriæ, and the huge pieces of rock,thrown out of this volcano, which arespread over the neighbouring valleys,covering a surface of several squareleagues, would form, were they heap-ed together, a colossal mountain. In1738 the flames of Cotopaxi rose ninehundred metres above the brink of thecrater. In 1744 the roarings of thevolcano were heard as far as Honda,a town on the borders of the Magda-lena, and at the distance of two hun-dred common leagues. On the 4thof April, 1768, the quantity of ashesejected by the mouth of Cotopaxi wasso great, that in the towns of Hambatoand Tacunga day broke only at threein the afternoon, and the inhabitantswere obliged to use lanterns in walk-ing the streets. The explosion whichtook place in the month of January,1803, was preceded by a dreadful phe-nomenon, the sudden melting of thesnows that covered the mountain.For twenty years before no smoke orvapour, that could be perceived, hadissued from the crater; and in a singlenight the subterraneous fire became soactive, that at sun-rise the externalwalls of the cone, heated, no doubt, toa very considerable temperature, ap-peared naked, and of the dark colour,which is peculiar to vitrified scoriæ.At the port of Guayaquil, fifty-twoleagues distant in a straight line fromthe crater, we heard, day and night,the noises of the volcano, like conti-nued discharges of a battery; we dis-tinguished these tremendous soundseven on the Pacific Ocean, to the south-west of the island of Puna. The form of Cotopaxi is the mostbeautiful and regular of the colos-sal summits of the high Andes. Itis a perfect cone, which, covered withan enormous layer of snow, shines withdazzling splendor at the setting of thesun, and detaches itself in the mostpicturesque manner from the azurevault of heaven. This covering ofsnow conceals from the eye of the ob-server even the smallest inequalities ofthe soil; no point of rock, no stonymass, penetrates this coating of ice, orbreaks the regularity of the figure ofthe cone. The summit of Cotopaxiresembles the Sugar-loaf (Pan deazucar) which terminates the Peak |Spaltenumbruch| of Teyde; but the height of its conis six times the height of that of thegreat volcano of the Island of Tene-riffe. The greater the regularity in theform of the cone of this volcano themore we are struck in finding, on theside to the south-east, a small mass ofrock, half concealed under the snow,studded with points, and which thenatives call the head of the Inca. Theorigin of this singular denomination isvery uncertain. A popular traditionprevails in the country that this iso-lated rock was heretofore a part of thetop of Cotopaxi. The Indians relatethat the volcano, at its first eruption,ejected far off a stony mass; which,like the cap of a dome, covered theenormous cavity that contains the sub-terraneous fire. Some pretend thatthis extraordinary catastrophe tookplace a short time after the invasion ofthe kingdom of Quito by the Inca Tu-pac Yupanqui; and that the rock tothe left of the volcano, is called thehead of the Inca, because its fall wasthe ominous presage of the death ofthe conqueror. Others, still morecredulous, affirm that this mass of por-phyry, with basis of pitchstone, wasdisplaced in an explosion that happen-ed at the very moment when the IncaAtahualpa was strangled by the Spa-niards at Caxamarca. letters. The want of letters observed in thenew continent, at the time of its se-cond discovery by Christopher Co-lumbus, leads to the idea that thetribes of the Tartar or Mongul race,which we may suppose to have passedfrom the east of Asia to America,were not in possession of alphabeticalwriting; or what is less probable, that,having relapsed into barbarism underthe influence of a climate less favour-able to the display of the understand-ing, they had lost this wonderful art,known only to a very small number ofindividuals. We shall not here exa-mine the question, whether the Deva-nagari alphabet is of remote antiquityon the banks of the Indus and theGanges; or whether, as Strabo assertsfrom Megasthenes, the Hindoos wereignorant of writing before the conquestsof Alexander. Farther to the eastand the north in the region of mono-syllabic languages, as in that of theTartarian, Samoiede, Ostiack, andKamtschadale tongues, the use of let-ters, wherever it is at present found, |614| |Spaltenumbruch|was introduced very late. It seemsindeed probable that it was the Chris-tian sect of Nestorians, who communi-cated the Stranghelo alphabet to theOighours and the Manchou Tartars;an alphabet, which in the northern re-gions of Asia is still more recent thanthe Runic characters in the north ofEurope. We need not therefore sup-pose the communications betweeneastern Asia and America to have beenof very remote antiquity, in order tocomprehend why this latter part of theworld had not been instructed in anart, which for a long series of ageswas unknown, except in Egypt, in thePhœnician and Grecian colonies, andin the small space lying between theMediterranean, the Oxus, and the Per-sian gulf. The first missionaries who visitedAmerica, Valades and Acosta, havealready called the Azteck paintings awriting similar to that of the Egyptians.If Kircher, Warburton, and otherlearned men, have since contested thepropriety of this expression, it is be-cause they have not distinguished thepaintings of a mixed kind, in which realhieroglyphics, sometimes curiological,sometimes tropical, are added to thenatural representation of an action,from simple hieroglyphical writing,such as is found, not on the pyramidion,but on the great faces of the obelisks.The famous inscription of Thebes,cited by Plutarch, and by Clement ofAlexandria, the only one, the expla-nation of which has reached us, ex-pressed by the hieroglyphics of a child,an old man, a vulture, a fish, and ahippopotamus, the following sentence,“You who are born, and who are to die,know, that the Eternal hates impu-dence.” A Mexican, to express thesame idea, would have represented thegreat spirit, Teotl, chastising a crimi-nal; certain characters placed abovetwo heads would have been sufficientto indicate the age of the child, andthat of the old man; he would haveindividualized the action, but thestyle of his hieroglyphical paintingswould not have furnished him with themeans of giving a general expressionto the sentiment of hatred and ven-geance. When we compare the Mexicanpaintings with the hieroglyphics thatdecorated the temples, the obelisks,and perhaps even the pyramids ofEgypt; and reflect on the progressivesteps which the human mind appears |Spaltenumbruch|to have followed in the invention ofgraphic means fitted to express ideas;we see that the nations of Americawere very distant from that perfectionwhich the Egyptians had obtained.The Aztecks were indeed but littleacquainted with simple hieroglyphics;they could represent the elements, andthe relations of time and of place; butit is only by a great number of thesecharacters, susceptible of being em-ployed separately, that the paintingof ideas becomes easy, and approxi-mates to writing. We find among theAztecks the germes of phonetic cha-racters: they knew how to writenames, by uniting certain signs whichare associated with sounds; this contri-vance might have led them to the beau-tiful discovery of giving an alphabeticform to their simple hieroglyphics;but ages would have elapsed beforethese nations of mountaineers, whoadhered to their manners and customswith the same invincible obstinacy asthe Chinese, the Japanese, and theHindoos, could have raised themselvesto the decomposition of words, theanalysis of sounds, the invention of analphabet. Among the Mexican people the fi-gures and symbolic characters were nottraced on separate leaves. Whateverwas the substance employed for manu-scripts, they were seldom destined toform rolls, but were almost alwaysfolded in zigzag, in a particular man-ner, like the mounts of our fans. Twotablets of light wood were pasted atthe ends, one at top, the other at bot-tom, so that before the painting wasunfolded the manuscript had the mostperfect resemblance with our boundbooks. By this arrangement, on open-ing a Mexican manuscript as we openour books, we can see only half of thecharacters at one time, those whichare painted on the same side of theskin, or paper of maguey: to examinethe whole of the pages, if the differentfolds of a band, which is often twelveor fifteen metres in length, can be call-ed pages, we must extend the wholemanuscript first from the left to theright, and then from the right to theleft. In this respect the Mexicanpaintings are perfectly similar to theSiamese manuscripts, preserved in thepublic library at Paris, which are alsofolded in zigzag. At Mexico the use of painting andof paper of maguey was extended farbeyond the limits of the empire of |615| |Spaltenumbruch|Montezuma, to the borders of the lakeof Nicaragua, whither the Toltecksin their migrations had carried theirlanguage and their arts. In the king-dom of Guatimala, the inhabitants ofTeochiapan had preserved traditions,that went back to the epocha of a greatdeluge; after which their ancestors,led by a chief called Votan, had comefrom a country lying toward the north.In the village of Teopixca there stillexisted in the sixteenth century de-scendants of the family of Votan, orVodan, for these two names are thesame, the Toltecks and the Aztecksnot having the four consonants d, b, r,s, in their language. They who havestudied the history of the Scandinaviannations in the heroic times must bestruck at finding in Mexico a namewhich recalls that of Wodan or Odin,who reigned among the Scythians, andwhose race, according to the very re-markable assertion of Bede, “gavekings to a great number of nations.” mexican paintings. From the researches I have made, itappears that there exist at present inEurope only six collections of Mexi-can paintings, those of the Escurial,Bologna, Veletri, Rome, Vienna, andBerlin. The learned jesuit Fabrega,who is often cited in the works of Mr.Zoega, and whose manuscripts relatingto the Azteck antiquities were com-municated to me by the Chevalier Bor-gia, nephew to the Cardinal of thatname, supposes that the archives ofSimancas, in Spain, contain also someof these hieroglyphical paintings,which Robertson has so aptly denomi-nated picture writings. The collection preserved at theEscurial has been examined by Mr.Waddilove, chaplain to the Englishembassy at Madrid when Lord Gran-tham was ambassador. It has theform of a book in folio; which maylead us to suspect that it is only a copyof a Mexican manuscript, for the ori-ginals I have examined are all of thesize of volumes in quarto. The ob-jects represented seem to prove thatthe collection of the Escurial, likethose of Italy and Vienna, are eitherastrological books or real rituals,which point out the religious ceremo-nies prescribed for particular days ofthe month. At the bottom of eachpage is an explanation in Spanish,which has been added since the con-quest. |Spaltenumbruch| The collection of Bologna is depo-sited in the library of the Instituteof Sciences of that city. We are un-acquainted with its origin; but weread on the first page that this painting,which is 326 centimetres (eleven Ro-man palms) in length, was ceded, the26th of December, 1665, by CountValerio Zani to the Marquis of Caspi.The characters, which are traced on athick and ill prepared skin, seem in agreat measure to allude to the form ofthe constellations, and to astrologicalnotions. There exists an engravedcopy of this Codex Mexicanus of Bo-logna, in the Museum of CardinalBorgia, at Veletri. The collection of Vienna, which issixty-five pages, is become celebratedsince it fixed the attention of Dr. Ro-bertson, who, in his classic work onthe history of the New Continent, haspublished a few pages in outlines only,and without colouring. We read onthe first page of this Mexican manu-script that it was sent by King Ema-nuel of Portugal to Pope Clement theSeventh, and that it has since been inthe hands of the Cardinals Hippolitode Medicis and Capuanus. The Codex Mexicanus of the Bor-gian museum at Veletri is the finest ofthe Azteck manuscripts that I haveexamined. The collection preserved in theroyal library at Berlin contains diffe-rent Azteck paintings, which I pur-chased during my abode in New Spain.The twelfth plate gives two fragmentsof this collection; it contains the listsof tributes, genealogies, the historyof the migrations of the Mexicans,and a calendar made at the beginningof the conquest, in which the simplehieroglyphics of the days are joined tofigures of saints painted in the Azteckstyle. The library of the Vatican at Romepossesses in the valuable collectionof its manuscripts two Codices Mexi-cani, numbered 3738 and 3776, in thecatalogue. These collections, as wellas the manuscript of Veletri, were un-known to Dr. Robertson, when heenumerated the Mexican paintingspreserved in the different libraries ofEurope. Mercatus, in his descriptionof the obelisks of Rome, relates thattoward the end of the sixteenth cen-tury two collections of original paint-ings existed in the Vatican. It wouldseem that one of these collections is |616| |Spaltenumbruch|entirely lost, unless it is that which isseen in the library of the Institute ofBologna; the other was found in 1785by the jesuit Fabrega, after fifteenyears search. mexican theology. The ninety-sixth page of the CodexVaticanus, represents on the left anadoration: the deity has on a helmet,the ornaments of which are very re-markable: he is seated on a smallbench, called icpalli, before a temple,of which only the top, or small chapelplaced on the upper part of the pyra-mid, is represented. The adorationconsisted, at Mexico, as well as in theEast, in the ceremony of touching theground with the right hand, and carry-ing the left to the mouth. In thedrawing, No. 1, the homage is ren-dered by a genuflexion; the attitudeof the figure, which prostrates itselfbefore the temple, is found in severalpaintings of the Hindoos. The group, No. 2, represents thecelebrated serpentwoman, Cihuacohuatl,called also Quilaztli, or Tonacacihua, woman of our flesh: she is the compa-nion of Tonacateuctli. The Mexi-cans considered her as the mother ofthe human race; and, after the godof the celestial Paradise, Ometeuetli,she held the first rank among the di-vinities of Anahuac; we see her al-ways represented with a great serpent.Other paintings exhibit to us a feather-headed snake, cut in pieces by thegreat spirit, Tezcatlipoca, or by theSun personified, the god Tonatiuh.These allegories remind us of theancient traditions of Asia. In the woman and serpent of the Aztecks wethink we perceive the Eve of the Se-metic nations: in the snake cut inpieces, the famous serpent Kaliya, or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, whenhe took the form of Krishna. TheTonatiuh of the Mexicans appears alsoto be identical with the Krishua of theHindoos, recorded in the BhagavataPurana, and with the Mithras of thePersians. The most ancient traditionsof nations go back to a state of things,when the earth, covered with bogs,was inhabited by snakes and otheranimals of gigantic bulk: the benefi-cent luminary, by drying up the soil,delivered the earth from these aquaticmonsters. Behind the serpent, who appears tobe speaking to the goddess Cihuaco-huatl, are two naked figures; they |Spaltenumbruch|are of a different colour, and seem tobe in the attitude of contending witheach other. We might be led to sup-pose, that the two vases, which wesee at the bottom of the picture, oneof which is overturned, is the cause ofthis contention. The serpent womanwas considered at Mexico as the mo-ther of two twin children; these nakedfigures are perhaps the children of Ci-huacohuatl; they remind us of theCain and Abel of Hebrew tradition. It is no way doubtful, that Nesto-rianism, mingled with the dogmataof the Bouddhistes and the Shamans,spread through Mantchou Tartaryinto the north-east of Asia: we maytherefore suppose, with some appear-ance of reason, that Christian ideashave been communicated by the samemeans to the Mexican nations, espe-cially to the inhabitants of thatnorthern region, from which the Tol-tecks emigrated, and which we mustconsider as the officina virorum of theNew World. When we examine this question bythe rules of the most rigid analysis,we find nothing among the Americans,which leads to the supposition, thatthe Asiatic nations migrated to theNew Continent after the establishmentof Christianity. I am very far fromdenying the possibility of these pos-terior communications; I am not ig-norant that the Tchoutskis annuallycrossed Behring’s Straits to make waron the inhabitants of the north-westcoast of America; but I think I mayaffirm, from the knowledge we haveacquired since the end of the last cen-tury of the sacred books of the Hin-doos, that, in order to explain theseresemblances of traditions, of whichall the first missionaries speak, wehave no need to recur to WesternAsia, peopled by nations of the Se-metic race; these same traditions, ofhigh and venerable antiquity, arefound both among the followers ofBrahma, and among the Shamans ofthe eastern steppes of Tartary. Notwithstanding these striking ana-logies existing between the nations ofthe New Continent, and the Tartartribes who have adopted the religionof Bouddah, I think I discover in themythology of the Americans, in thestyle of their paintings, in their lan-guages, and especially in their exter-nal conformation, the descendants ofa race of men, which, early separated |617| |Spaltenumbruch|from the rest of mankind, has follow-ed for a lengthened series of ages, apeculiar road in the unfolding of itsintellectual faculties, and in its ten-dency towards civilization. chimborazo and carguairazo. The group of Chimborazo and Car-guairazo, has an absolute elevation of2891 metres (1493 toises); it is onlya sixth less elevated than the top ofEtna. The summit of Chimborazodoes not therefore surpass the heightof this plain more than 3640 metres,which is 84 metres less than the heightof the top of Mount Blanc above thepriory of Chamonix; for the differ-ence between Chimborazo and MountBlanc is nearly equal to that which isobserved between the elevation of theplain of Tapia, and the bottom of thevalley of Chamonix. The top of thePeak of Teneriffe, compared with thelevel of the town of Oratava, is stillmore elevated than Chimborazo andMount Blanc above Riobamba andChamonix. We distinguish three kinds of prin-cipal forms belonging to the high topsof the Andes. The volcanoes whichare yet burning, those which have buta single crater of extraordinary size,are conic mountains, with summitstruncated in a greater or less degree:such is the figure of Cotopaxi, of Po-pocatepec, and the Peak of Orizaba.Volcanoes, the summits of which havesunk after a long series of eruptions,exhibit ridges bristled with points,needles leaning in different directions,and broken rocks falling into ruins.Such is the form of the Altar, orCapac-Urcu, a mountain once morelofty than Chimborazo, and the de-struction of which is considered as amemorable period in the natural his-tory of the New Continent; such isthe form also of Carguairazo, a greatpart of which fell in on the night ofthe 19th of July, 1698. Torrents ofwater and mud then issued from theopened sides of the mountain, andlaid waste the neighbouring country.This dreadful catastrophe was accom-panied by an earthquake, which, inthe adjacent towns of Hambato, andLlactacunga, swallowed up thousandsof inhabitants. A third form of the high tops of theAndes, and the most majestic of thewhole, is that of Chimborazo, thesummit of which is circular; it re-minds us of those paps without cra-ters, which the elastic force of the va- |Spaltenumbruch| pours swells up in regions where thehollow crust of the globe is mined bysubterraneous fires. The aspect ofmountains of granite has little analogywith that of Chimborazo. The gra-nitic summits are flattened hemis-pheres; the trappean porphyry formsslender cupolas. Thus on the shoreof the South Sea, after the long rainsof winter, when the transparency ofthe air has suddenly increased, we seeChimborazo appear like a cloud at thehorizon; it detaches itself from theneighbouring summits, and towersover the whole chain of the Andes,like that majestic dome, produced bythe genius of Michael Angelo, overthe antique monuments, which sur-round the Capitol. Travellers who have approached thesummits of Mont Blanc and Mont Roseare alone capable of feeling the cha-racter of this calm, majestic, and so-lemn scenery. The bulk of Chimbo-razo is so enormous, that the partwhich the eye embraces at once nearthe limit of the eternal snows is seventhousand metres in breadth. The ex-treme rarity of the strata of air, acrosswhich we see the tops of the Andes,contributes greatly to the splendour ofthe snow, and the magical effect of itsreflection. Under the tropics, at aheight of five thousand metres,* theazure vault of the sky appears of anindigo tint. The outlines of the moun-tain detach themselves from the sky inthis pure and transparent atmosphere,while the inferior strata of the air, re-posing on a plain destitute of vegeta-tion, which reflects the radiant heat,are vaporous, and appear to veil themiddle ground of the landscape. The elevated plain of Tapia, whichextends to the east as far as the foot ofthe altar, and of Condorasto, is threethousand metres in height, nearly equalto that of Canigou, one of the highestsummits of the Pyrennees. A fewplants of schinus, molle, cactus, agave,and molina, are scattered over thebarren plain: and we see in the fore-ground lamas (camelus lacma) sketch-ed from nature, and groups of Indiansgoing to the market of Lican. Theflank of the mountain presents thatgradation of vegetable life, which Ihave endeavoured to trace in my chartof the Geography of plants, and whichmay be followed on the western top ofthe Andes from the impenetrable

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* 39,371 inches.|618| |Spaltenumbruch|groves of palm trees to the perpetualsnows, bordered by thin layers of li-chens. At three thousand five hundredmetres absolute height, the ligneousplants with coriaceous and shiningleaves nearly disappear. The regionof shrubs is separated from that of thegrasses by alpine plants, by tufts ofnerteria, valerian, saxifrage, and lo-belia, and by small cruciferous plants.The grasses form a very broad belt,covered at intervals with snow, whichremains but a few days. This belt,called in the country the pajonal, ap-pears at a distance, like a gilded yellowcarpet. Its colour forms an agreeablecontrast with that of the scatteredmasses of snow; and is owing to thestalks and leaves of the grasses burntby the rays of the sun in the seasons ofgreat draught. Above the pajonal liesthe region of cryptogamus plants,which here and there cover the por-phyritic rocks destitute of vegetableearth. Farther on, at the limit of theperpetual ice, is the termination oforganic life. mexican calendar. The civil year of the Aztecks wasa solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, and was divided into eighteenmonths, each of twenty days. Afterthese eighteen months, or three hun-dred and sixty days, five complemen-tary days were added, and the yearbegan anew. The names of Tonalpo-hualli or Cempohualilhuitl, which dis-tinguished this civil calendar from theritual calendar, sufficiently indicatedits principal characters. The first ofthese names signifies reckoning of theSun, in opposition to the ritual calen-dar, called reckoning of the Moon, or Metzlapohualli: the second denomina-tion is derived from cempohualli, twenty,and ilhuitl, festival; and it alludes,either to the twenty days contained ineach month, or the twenty solemnfestivals celebrated during the courseof a civil year, in the teocallis, or houses of the gods. The beginning of the civil day amongthe Aztecks was reckoned like thatof the Persians, the Egyptians, theBabylonians, and the greater part ofthe nations of Asia, except the Chi-nese, from sunrising. It was dividedinto eight intervals, a division foundamong the Hindoos and the Romans;four of which were determined by therising of the Sun, its setting, and its |Spaltenumbruch|two passages across the meridian.The rising was called yquiza tonatiuh;noon, nepantla tonatiuh; the setting, onaqui tonatiuh; and midnight, yohual-nepantla. The hieroglyphic of theday was a circle divided into fourparts. Although, under the parallelof the city of Mexico, the length ofthe day does not vary more than twohours twenty-one minutes, it is verycertain, that the Mexican hours wereoriginally unequal, like the planetaryhours of the Jews, and all those whichthe Greek astronomers noted underthe name of καιρικαι, in opposition tothe ισημεριναι, equinoxial hours. To correct the lunar year, and makeit coincide with the solar year, elevendays, according to ancient custom,were added; which, by the edict ofthe Inca, were divided among thetwelve moons. According to this ar-rangement, it was scarcely possible,that four equal periods, into whichthe lunar months should be divided,could be seven days each, and corre-spond to the phases of the Moon. Thesame historian, whose testimony iscited by M. Bailly in favor of the opi-nion, that the week of the Hindooswas known to the Americans, affirms,that, according to an ancient law ofthe Inca Pachacutec, there ought tobe in each lunar month three days forfestivals and for markets (catu); andthat the people were to work, notseven, but eight consecutive days, andrest the ninth. This is undoubtedlya division of a lunar month, or a side-ral revolution of the Moon, into threesmall periods of nine days. We shall observe, on this occasion,that the Japanese, a nation of the Tar-tar race, are equally unacquainted withthe small period of seven days; whileit is in use among the Chinese, whoseem also aborigines of the elevatedplain of Tartary, but who have longhad intimate communications withHindostan and Thibet. their chronology. The Mexicans were in possession ofannals, that went back to eight cen-turies and a half beyond the epochaof the arrival of Cortez in the countryof Anahuac. We have already ex-plained how these annals presented,in their subdivisions, sometimes acycle of fifty-two years, at others athalpilli of thirteen years, and at othersa single year of two hundred and sixtydays, contained in twenty small pe- |619| |Spaltenumbruch|riods of thirteen days, according asthe history was more or less minute.The Toltecks had disappeared fourhundred and sixty-five years before thearrival of Cortez; the nation whichthe Spaniards found settled in thevalley of Mexico was of the Azteckrace: what he knew of the Tolteckshe could have learnt only from paint-ings, which they had left in the coun-try of Anahuac; or from some dis-persed familes, who, restrained by thelove of their native soil, had notthought proper to share the chancesof the emigration. Let us now examine the ingeniousbut very complicated methods, ofwhich these people made use to de-note the year and the day of a cycle offifty-two years. This method is iden-tic with that made use of by the Hin-doos, the Thibetans, the Chinese, theJapanese, and the Asiatic people ofthe Tartar race; who also distin-guished the months and the years bythe correspondence of several periodi-cal series, the number of the terms ofwhich is not the same. The Mexi-cans employ, for the cycle of years,the four following signs, which havethe names of

• Tochtli ‒ a rabbit or hare,
• Actal ‒ a cane,
• Tecpatl ‒ a flint, or silex,
• Calli ‒ ‒ a house.

The same contrivance of the con-cordance of two periodical series wasemployed to distinguish the days ofthe same year. It appears, that ori-ginally among the Mexican nations,as well as among the Persians, eachday of the month had a name, and aparticular sign; these twenty signsrecall to mind the yogas, which, in theastrological almanack of the Hindoos,we find added to the twenty-eightdays of the lunar month. In the Metztlapohualli, or reckoning of the Moon, of the Aztecks, they were distributedamong the small cycles of the half-lunations; so that a periodical seriesof thirteen terms, which were all ci-phers, corresponded to a periodicalseries of twenty terms, which con-tained only hieroglyphical signs. Itis in this series of days, that we findthe four grand signs—rabbit, cane,flint, and house, by which, as wehave just seen, the years of a cyclewere denoted; sixteen other signs ofan inferior order were so distributed,that in an equal number of four they |Spaltenumbruch|separated the grand signs one from theother. wodan. Votan, or Wodan, an American,seems to be a member of the same fa-mily with the Wods, or Odins, of theGoths, and nations of Celtic origin.As Odin and Boudha, according to thelearned researches of Sir WilliamJones, are probably one and the sameperson, it is curious to see the namesof Boudvar, Wodans dag, (Wednes-day), and Votan, denote in India, inScandinavia, and Mexico, a day of asmall period. According to the an-cient traditions, collected by theBishop Francis Nunnez de la Vega;“the Wodan of the Chiapanese wasgrandson of that illustrious old man,who, at the time of the great deluge,in which the greater part of the humanrace perished, was saved on a rafttogether with his family.” Wodanco-operated in the construction of thegreat edifice, which had been under-taken by men to reach the skies; theexecution of this rash project was in-terrupted; each family received fromthat time a different language, andthe great spirit, Teotl, ordered Wodan,to go and people the country of Ana-huac. This American tradition re-minds us of the Menou of the Hin-doos, the Noah of the Hebrews, andthe dispersion of the Couschites ofSingar [the Cushites of Shinar].Comparing this tradition either withthose of the Hebrews and Indianspreserved in Genesis and the twosacred Pouranas, or with the fable ofXelhua the Cholulain, and other factscited in the course of this work, it isimpossible to avoid being struck withthe analogy, which exists between theold memorials of the people of Asia,and those of the New Continent. tradition of the flood. A great inundation, which beganthe year ce calli, the day 4 water (nahuiatl), destroyed mankind. This is thelast of the great revolutions, whichthe world has undergone. Men weretransformed into fish, except one manand one woman, who saved themselvesin the trunk of an ahahuète, or cupressusdisticha. The drawing represents thegoddess of water, called Matlalcueje, or Chalchiukcueje, and considered as thecompanion of Tlaloc, descending to-wards the earth. Coxcox, the Noahof the Mexicans, and his wife Xochi-quetzal, are seated in a trunk of a tree, |620| |Spaltenumbruch|covered with leaves, and floatingamidst the waters. These four ages which are also de-signated under the name of suns, con-tain together eighteen thousand andtwenty-eight years; that is to say,six thousand years more than the fourPersian ages described in the Zend-Avesta. I no where find how manyyears had elapsed from the deluge ofCoxcox to the sacrifice of Tlalixco,or till the reform of the Azteck calen-dar; but, however near we may sup-pose these two periods, we still findthat the Mexicans attributed to theworld a duration of more than twentythousand years. This duration cer-tainly forms a contrast with the greatperiod of the Hindoos, which consistsof four millions three hundred andtwenty thousand years; and still morewith the cosmogonical fiction of theThibetans, according to which man-kind already compute eighteen revo-lutions, each of which has several padu, expressed by numbers of sixty-twociphers. It is nevertheless remarkablethat we find an American people, who,according to the same system of the ca-lendar in use among them on the ar-rival of Cortez, indicate the days andthe years in which the world under-went great catastrophes farther backthan twenty ages. The history begins by the Delugeof Coxcox, or the fourth destruc-tion of the world, which, accord-ing to the Azteck cosmogony, termi-nates the fourth of the great cycles, atonatiuh, the age of water. This cata-clysm took place, according to the tworeceived chronological systems, onethousand four hundred and seventeen,or eighteen thousand and twenty-eightyears after the beginning of the age ofearth, tlaltonatiuh. The enormous dif-ference of these numbers ought less toastonish us, when we recollect the hy-potheses, which in our days have beenadvanced by Bailly, Sir William Jones,and Bentley, on the duration of thefive Yougas of the Hindoos. Of thedifferent nations that inhabit Mexico,paintings representing the deluge ofCoxcox are found among the Aztecks,the Miztecks, the Zapotecks, theTlascaltecks, and the Mechoacanese.The Noah Xisuthrus, or Menou ofthese nations, is called Coxcox, Teo-Cipactli, or Tezpi. He saved himselfconjointly with his wife, Xochiquetzal,in a bark, or, according to other tradi-tions, on a raft of ahuahuete (cupressus |Spaltenumbruch|disticha). The painting representsCoxcox in the midst of the water,lying in a bark. The mountain, thesummit of which, crowned by a tree,rises above the waters, is the Peak ofColhuacan, the Ararat of the Mexi-cans. The horn, which is representedon the left, is the phonetic hieroglyphicof Colhuacan. At the foot of themountain appear the heads of Coxcoxand his wife. The latter of these isknown by the two tresses in the formof horns, which, as we have often ob-served, denote the female sex. Themen born after the deluge were dumb:a dove, from the top of a tree, distri-butes among them tougues, representedunder the form of small commas. Wemust not confound this dove with thebird which brings Coxcox tidings, thatthe waters were dried up. The peopleof Mechoacan preserved a tradition,according to which Coxcox, whomthey called Tezpi, embarked in a spa-cious acalli with his wife, his children,several animals and grain, the preser-vation of which was of importance tomankind. When the great spirit, Tez-catlipoca, ordered the waters to with-draw, Tezpi sent out from his bark avulture, the zopilote (vultur aura).This bird, which feeds on dead flesh,did not return on account of the greatnumber of carcasses, with which theearth, recently dried up, was strewed.Tezpi sent out other birds, one ofwhich, the humming bird, alone re-turned, holding in its beak a branchcovered with leaves; Tezpi seeingthat fresh verdure began to clothe thesoil, quitted his bark near the moun-tain of Colhuacan. These traditions, we here repeat,remind us of others of high and vene-rable antiquity. The sight of marinesubstances, found even on the loftiestsummits, might give men, who havehad no communication, the idea ofgreat inundations, which for a certaintime extinguished organic life on theearth: but ought we not to acknow-ledge the traces of a common origin,wherever cosmogonical ideas, and thefirst traditions of nations, offer strikinganalogies even in the minutest circum-stances? does not the humming-birdof Tezpi remind us of Noah’s dove,that of Deucalion, and the birds,which, according to Berosus, Xisuth-rus sent out from his ark, to see whe-ther the waters had run off, and whe-ther he might erect altars to the pro-tecting divinities of Chaldea? |621| |Spaltenumbruch| bochica. In the description of the cataract ofTequendama, we have spoken of thatmarvellous personage, known in theAmerican mythology under the nameof Bochica, or Idacanzas, who openeda passage for the waters of the lakeof Funzha, assembled the wanderingtribes into a social state, introducedthe worship of the Sun, and, like thePeruvian Manco-Capac, and the Mex-ican Quetzalcoatl, became the legis-lator of the Muyscas. These sametraditions relate, that Bochica, sonand emblem of the Sun, high priest ofSogamozo, or Iraca, seeing the chiefsof the different Indian tribes disputingfor the supreme authority, advisedthem to choose for zaque, or sovereign,one among them called Huncahua, re-vered on account of his wisdom andjustice. The advice of the high priestwas universally adopted; and Hun-cahua, who reigned two hundred andfifty years, subdued the whole of thecountry that extends from the savan-nahs of San Juan de los Llanos to themountains of Opon. Bochica, devot-ing himself to a life of severe penance,lived a hundred Muysca cycles, ortwo thousand years. He disappearedmysteriously at Iraca, to the east ofTunja. This town, which was thenthe most populous in the country, wasfounded by Huncahua, the first of thedynasty of the zaques of Cundina-murca; and took the name of Hunca,from its founder, which the Spaniardsafterward changed into that of Tunca,or Tunja. The form of government given byBochica to the inhabitants of Bogotais very remarkable from its analogywith those of Japan and Thibet. TheIncas of Peru united in their personthe temporal and spiritual powers.The children of the Sun were bothpriests and kings. At Cundinamurca,at a period probably anterior to Man-co-Capac, Bochica had constituted thefour chiefs of tribes, Gameza, Bus-banca, Pesca, and Toca, electors;and ordered, that, after his death,these electors, and their descendants,should have the right of choosing thehigh priest of Iraca. The pontiffs, orlamas, the successors of Bochica, wereconsidered as heirs of his virtue andsanctity; and such as Cholula, in thetime of Montezuma, was to the Az-tecks, Iraca had been to the Muyscas.The people thronged in crowds to offerpresents to the high priest, visiting |Spaltenumbruch|those places which were consecratedby the miracles of Bochica; and amidstthe horrors of the most sanguinarywarfare, the pilgrims enjoyed the pro-tection of those princes, through whoseterritories they passed to visit thesanctuary (chunsua), and prostrate them-selves at the feet of the lama, whopresided there. The temporal chief,called zaque of Tunja, to whom the zippa, or princes, of Bogota, paid anannual tribute, and the pontiff of Ira-ea, were consequently two distinctpotentates, as the emperor and dairiare in Japan. Bochica was not only considered asthe founder of a new worship and law-giver of the Muyscas; as emblem ofthe sun he regulated the seasons, andto him was attributed the invention ofthe calendar. He had prescribed alsothe order of the sacrifices, which wereto be celebrated at the end of thesmail cycles, on account of the fifthlunar intercalation. The least division of time amongthe Muyscas was a period of threedays. The week of seven days wasunknown in America, as well as inpart of eastern Asia. On the first dayof this small period a great marketwas held at Turmequé.