RESEARCHES Concerning THE INSTITUTIONS AND MONUMENTS OF THE Ancient Inhabitants OF AMERICA; WITH DESCRIPTIONS AND VIEWS OF SOME OF THE MOST STRIKING SCENES IN THE CORDILLERAS.

Written in French by ALEXANDER DE HUMBOLDT.

And translated into English by HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

In 2 vols. 8vo.

Price 2l. 12s.

6d.

These volumes finish the extensive series of M. de Humboldt, which together form fourteen volumes in the French original.

In these dissertations he exhibits the varied researches of the learned antiquary, physiologist, naturalist, astronomer, and geologist.

The entire circle of literature exhibits nothing more profound or interesting than several of these essays.

We have endeavored to introduce all the passages which bear separation from the context, to the notice and admiration of our readers; and we have no doubt but they will partake of our pleasure in the perusal.

old and new worlds.

NEITHER an attentive examination of the geological constitution of America, nor reflections on the equilibrium of the fluids, that are diffused over the surface of the globe, lead us to admit, that the new continent emerged from the waters at a later period than the old: we discern in the former the same succession of stony strata, that we find in our own hemisphere; and it is probable, that, in the mountains of Peru, the granites, the micaceous schists, or the different formations of gypsum, and gritstone, existed originally at the same periods as the rocks of the same denominations in the Alps of Switzerland.

The whole globe appears to have undergone the same catastrophes.

At a height superior to that of Mount Blanc, on the summit of the Andes, we find petrified sea shells; fossil bones of elephants are spread over the equinoctial regions; and, what is very remarkable, they are not discovered at the feet of the palm trees in the burning plains of the Orinoco, but on the coldest and most elevated regions of the Cordilleras.

In the new world, as well as in the old, generations of species long extinct have preceded those, which now people the earth, the waters, and the air.

man.

There is no proof, that the existence of man is much more recent in America than in the other continent.

Within the tropics, the strength of vegetation, the breadth of rivers, and partial inundations have presented powerful obstacles to the migration of nations.

The extensive countries of the north of Asia are as thinly peopled as the savannahs of New Mexico and Paraguay; nor is it necessary to suppose, that the countries first peopled are those, which offer the greatest mass of inhabitants.

The problem of the first population of America, is no more the province of history, than the questions on the origin of plants and animals, and on the distribution of organic germs, are that of natural science.

History, in carrying us back to the earliest epochas, instructs us that almost every part of the globe is occupied by men who think themselves aborigines, because they are ignorant of their origin.

Among a multitude of nations, who have succeeded, or have been incorporated with each other, it is impossible to discover with precision, the first basis of population, that primitive stratum beyond which the region of cosmogonical tradition begins.

The nations of America, except those which border on the polar circle, form a single race, characterized by the formation of the scull, the colour of the skin, the extreme thinness of the beard, and straight and glossy hair.

The American race bears a very striking resemblance to that of the Mongul nations, which include the descendants of the Hiong-Nu, known heretofore by the name of Huns, the Kalkas, the Kalmucks, and the Burats.

It has been ascertained, by late observations, that not only the inhabitants of Unalashka, but several tribes of South America, indicate, by the osteological characters of the head, a passage from the American to the Mongul race.

When we shall have more completely studied the brown men of Africa; and that swarm of nations, who inhabit the interior and north-east of Asia, and who are vaguely described by systematic travellers under the name of Tartars and Tschoudes, the Caucasian, Mongul, American, Malay, and Negro races, will appear less insulated, and we shall acknowledge, in this great family of the human race, one single organic type, modified by circumstances which perhaps will ever remain unknown.

Though the nations of the new continent are connected by intimate ties, they exhibit, in the mobility of their features, in their complexions, tanned in a greater or less degree, and in their stature, a difference as remarkable as the Arabians, the Persians, and Sclavonians, who are all of the Caucasian race.

The hordes who wander along the burning plains of the equinoctial regions have, however, no darker skins than the mountaineers of the temperate zone; whether it be that in the human race, and in the greater part of animals, there is a certain period of organic life, beyond which the influence of climate and food have no effect, or that the deviation from the primitive type becomes apparent only after a long series of ages.

Besides, every thing concurs to prove, that the Americans, as well as the people of the Mongul race, have less flexibility of organization than the other nations of Asia and Europe.

languages.

The number of languages, which distinguish the different native tribes, appears still more considerable in the new continent than in Africa, where, according to the late researches of Messrs. Seetzen and Vater, there are above one hundred and forty.

In this respect, the whole of America resembles Caucasus, Italy before the conquest of the Romans, Asia Minor when that country contained, on a small extent of territory, the Cilicians of Semitic race, the Phrygians of Thracian origin, the Lydians, and the Celts.

The configuration of the soil, the strength of vegetation, the apprehensions of the mountaineers under the tropics of exposing themselves to the burning heat of the plains, are obstacles to communication, and contribute to the amazing variety of American dialects.

This variety, it is observed, is more restrained in the savannahs and forests of the north, which are easily traversed by the hunter, on the banks of great rivers along the coast of the ocean, and in every country where the Incas had established their theocracy by the force of arms.

When it is asserted, that several hundred languages are found in a continent, the whole population of which is not equal to that of France, we regard as different those languages, which bear the same affinity to each other, I will not say as the German and the Dutch, or the Italian and the Spanish, but as the Danish and the German, the Chaldean and the Arabic, the Greek and the Latin.

In proportion as we penetrate into the labyrinth of American idioms, we discover, that several are susceptible of being classed by families, while a still greater number remain insulated, like the Biscayan among European, and the Japanese among Asiatic languages.

This separation may, however, be only apparent; for we may presume that the languages, which seem to admit of no ethnographical classification, have some affinity, either with other languages which have been for a long time extinct, or with the idioms of nations which have never yet been visited by travellers.

The greater part of the American languages, even such as have the same difference with each other as the languages of Germanic origin, the Celtic and the Sclavonian, bear a certain analogy in the whole of their organization: for instance, in the complication of grammatical forms, in the modification of the verb according to the nature of its syntax, and in the number of additive particles (affixa et suffixa).

This uniform tendency of the idioms betrays, if not a community of origin, at least a great analogy in the intellectual dispositions of the American tribes, from Greenland to the Magellanic regions.

Investigations made with the most scrupulous exactness, in following a method which had not hitherto been used in the study of etymologies, have proved, that there are a few words that are common in the vocabularies of the two continents.

In eighty-three American languages, examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater, one hundred and seventy words have been found, the roots of which appear to be the same; and it is easy to perceive, that this analogy is not accidental, since it does not rest merely on imitative harmony, or on that conformity in the organs, which produces almost a perfect identity in the first sounds articulated by children.

Of these one hundred and seventy words, which have this connexion with each other, three fifths resemble the Mantchou, the Tongouse, the Mongul, and the Samoyede; and two fifths the Celtic and Tschoud, the Biscayan, the Coptic, and the Congo languages.

These words have been found by comparing the whole of the American languages with the whole of those of the old world; for hitherto we are acquainted with no American idiom, which seems to have an exclusive correspondence with any of the Asiatic, African, or European tongues.

What some learned writers have asserted from abstract theories, respecting the pretended poverty of all the American languages, and the extreme imperfection of their numerical system, is as doubtful as the assertions which have been made respecting the weakness and stupidity of the human race throughout the new continent, the stunted growth of animated nature, and the degeneration of those animals, which have been transported from one hemisphere to the other.

origin.

Though no traditions point out any direct connexion between the nations of North and South America, their history is not less fraught with analogies in the political and religious revolutions, from which dates the civilization of the Aztecks, the Muyscas, and the Peruvians.

Men with beards, and with clearer complexions than the natives of Anahuac, Cundinamarca, and the elevated plain of Couzco, make their appearance without any indication of the place of their birth; and, bearing the title of high priests, of legislators, of the friends of peace and the arts, which flourish under its auspices, operate a sudden change in the policy of the nations, who hail their arrival with veneration.

Quetzalcoatl, Bochica, and Manco Capac, are the sacred names of these mysterious beings.

Quetzalcoatl, clothed in a black sacerdotal robe, comes from Panuco, from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; Bochica, the Boudha of the Muyscas, presents himself on the high plains of Bogota, where he arrives from the savannahs, which stretch along the east of the Cordilleras.

The history of these legislators, which I have endeavoured to unfold in this work, is intermixed with miracles, religious fictions, and with those characters which imply an allegorical meaning.

Some learned men have pretended to discover, that these strangers were shipwrecked Europeans, or the descendants of those Scandinavians, who, in the eleventh century, visited Greenland, Newfoundland, and perhaps Nova Scotia; but a slight reflection on the period of the Tolteck migrations, on the monastic institutions, the symbols of worship, the calendar, and the form of the monuments of Cholula, of Sogamozo, and of Couzco, leads us to conclude, that it was not in the north of Europe that Quetzalcoatl, Bochica, and Manco Capac framed their code of laws.

Every consideration leads us rather towards Eastern Asia, to those nations who have been in contact with the inhabitants of Thibet, to the Shamanist Tartars, and the bearded Ainos of the isles of Jesso and Sachalin.

pyramid of cholula.

Among those swarms of nations, which, from the seventh to the twelfth century of the christian era, successively inhabited the country of Mexico, five are enumerated; the Toltecks, the Cicimecks, the Acolhuans, the Tlascaltecks, and the Aztecks, who, notwithstanding their political divisions, spoke the same language, followed the same worship, and built pyramidal edifices, which they regarded as teocallis, that is to say, the houses of their gods.

These edifices were all of the same form, though of very different dimensions; they were pyramids, with several terraces, and the sides of which stood exactly in the direction of the meridian, and the parallel of the place.

The teocalli was raised in the midst of a square and walled enclosure, which, somewhat like the peribolos of the Greeks, contained gardens, fountains, the dwellings of the priests, and sometimes arsenals; since each house of a Mexican divinity, like the ancient temple or Baal Berith, burnt by Abimelech, was a strong place.

A great staircase led to the top of the truncated pyramid, and on the summit of the platform were one or two chapels, built like towers, which contained the colossal idols of the divinity, to whom the teocalli was dedicated.

This part of the edifice must be considered as the most consecrated place; like the naos, or rather the sekos, of the Grecian temples.

It was there, also, that the priests kept up the sacred fire.

From the peculiar construction of the edifice we have just described, the priest who offered the sacrifice was seen by a great mass of the people at the same time: the procession of the teopixqui, ascending or descending the staircase of the pyramid, was beheld at a considerable distance.

The inside of the edifice was the burial place of the kings and principal personages of Mexico. It is impossible to read the descriptions, which Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus have left us, of the temple of Jupiter Belus, without being struck with the resemblance of that Babylonian monument to the teocallis of Anahuac.

The teocalli of Mexico was dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, the first of the Azteck divinities after Teotl, who is the supreme and invisible being; and to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war.

It was built by the Aztecks, on the model of the pyramids of Teotihuacan, six years only before the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

This truncated pyramid, called by Cortez the principal temple, was ninety-seven metres in breadth at its basis, and nearly fifty-four metres in height.

It is not astonishing, that a building of these dimensions should have been destroyed a few years after the siege of Mexico.

In Egypt there scarcely remains any vestiges of the enormous pyramids, which towered amidst the waters of the lake Moeris, and which Herodotus says were ornamented with colossal statues.

The pyramids of Porsenna, of which the description 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 most celebrated of the whole of the pyramidal monuments of Anahuac is the teocalli of Cholula. It is called in the present day the Mountain made by the hand of Man (monte hecho a manos).

At a distance it has the aspect of a natural hill covered with vegetation.

The great teocalli of Cholula, called also the Mountain of unbaked bricks (tlalchihualtepec), had an altar on its top, dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, the god of the air.

This Quetzalcoatl, whose name signifies serpent clothed with green feathers, from coatl, serpent, and quetzalli, green feathers, is the most mysterious being of the whole Mexican mythology.

He was a white and bearded man, like the Bochica of the Muyscus.

He was high priest of Tula (Tollan,) legislator, chief of a religious sect, which, like the Sonyasis and the Bouddhists of Indostan, inflicted on themselves the most cruel penances.

He introduced the custom of piercing the lips and the ears, and lacerating the rest of the body with the prickles of the agave leaves, or the thorns of the cactus; and of putting reeds into the wounds, in order that the blood might be seen to trickle more copiously.

Another very remarkable tradition still exists among the Indians of Cholula, according to which the great pyramid was not originally destined to serve for the worship of Quetzalcoatl.

After my return to Europe, on examining at Rome the Mexican manuscript in the Vatican library, I found, that this same tradition was already recorded in a manuscript of Pedro de Los Rios, a Dominican monk, who, in 1566, copied on the very spot all the hieroglyphical paintings he could procure.

"Before the great inundation which took place four thousand eight hundred years after the creation of the World, the country of Anahuac was inhabited by giants (tzocuillixeque).

All those who did not perish were transformed into fishes, save seven, who fled into caverns.

When the waters subsided, one of these giants, Xelhua, surnamed the architect, went to Cholollan; where, as a memorial of the mountain Tlaloc, which had served for an asylum to himself and his six brethren, he built an artificial hill in form of a pyramid.

He ordered bricks to be made in the province of Tlamanalco, at the foot of the Sierra of Cocotl, and to convey them to Cholula he placed a file of men, who passed them from hand to hand.

The gods beheld with wrath this edifice, the top of which was to reach the clouds.

Irritated at the daring attempt of Xelhua, they hurled fire on the pyramid.

Numbers of the workmen perished; the work was discontinued, and the monument was afterwards dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, the god of the air."

The size of the platform of the pyramid of Cholula, on which I made a great number of astronomical observations, is four thousand two hundred square metres.

From it the eye ranges over a magnificant prospect; Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl, the peak of Orizaba, and the Sierra de Tlascalla, famous for the tempests which gather around its summit.

We view at the same time three mountains higher than Mount Blanc, two of which are still burning volcanoes.

A small chapel, surrounded with cypress, and dedicated to the Virgin de los Remedios, has succeeded to the temple of the god of the air, or the Mexican Indra.

An ecclesiastic of the Indian race celebrates mass every day on the top of this antique monument.

No one of the ancient writers, neither Herodotus nor Strabo, Diodorus nor Pausanias, Arrian nor Quintus Curtius, asserts, that the temple of Belus was erected according to the four cardinal points, like the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids.

Pliny observes only, that Belus was considered as the inventor of astronomy:

Inventor hic fuit sideralis scientioe.

Diodorus relates, that the Babylonian temple served as an observatory to the Chaldeans.

"It must be admitted," says he, "that this building was of an extraordinary height, and that here the Chaldeans made their observations on the stars, the rising and setting of which might be exactly perceived, on account of the elevation of the edifice."

The Mexican priests, (teopixqui) made observations also on the stars from the summit of the teocallis; and announced to the people, by the sound of the horn, the hours of the night.

These teocallis were built in the interval between the epocha of Mahomet and the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella; and we cannot observe without astonishment, that American edifices, the form of which is almost the same as that of one of the most ancient monuments on the banks of the Euphrates, belong to times so near our own.

volcano of cotopaxi.

Cotopaxi is the loftiest of those volcanoes of the Andes, which at recent epochs have undergone eruptions.

Its absolute height is five thousand seven hundred and fifty-four metres (two thousand nine hundred and fifty-two toises); it is double that of Canigou; and consequently eight hundred metres higher than Vesuvius would be, were it placed on the top of the Peak of Teneriffe.

Cotopaxi is also the most dreadful volcano of the kingdom of Quito, and its explosions the most frequent and diastrous.

The mass of scoriae, and the huge pieces of rock, thrown out of this volcano, which are spread over the neighbouring valleys, covering a surface of several square leagues, would form, were they heaped together, a colossal mountain.

In 1738 the flames of Cotopaxi rose nine hundred metres above the brink of the crater.

In 1744 the roarings of the volcano were heard as far as Honda, a town on the borders of the Magdalena, and at the distance of two hundred common leagues.

On the 4th of April, 1768, the quantity of ashes ejected by the mouth of Cotopaxi was so great, that in the towns of Hambato and Tacunga day broke only at three in the afternoon, and the inhabitants were obliged to use lanterns in walking the streets.

The explosion which took place in the month of January, 1803, was preceded by a dreadful phenomenon, the sudden melting of the snows that covered the mountain.

For twenty years before no smoke or vapour, that could be perceived, had issued from the crater; and in a single night the subterraneous fire became so active, that at sun-rise the external walls of the cone, heated, no doubt, to a very considerable temperature, appeared naked, and of the dark colour, which is peculiar to vitrified scoriae.

At the port of Guayaquil, fifty-two leagues distant in a straight line from the crater, we heard, day and night, the noises of the volcano, like continued discharges of a battery; we distinguished these tremendous sounds even on the Pacific Ocean, to the southwest of the island of Puna.

The form of Cotopaxi is the most beautiful and regular of the colossal summits of the high Andes. It is a perfect cone, which, covered with an enormous layer of snow, shines with dazzling splendor at the setting of the sun, and detaches itself in the most picturesque manner from the azure vault of heaven.

This covering of snow conceals from the eye of the observer even the smallest inequalities of the soil; no point of rock, no stony mass, penetrates this coating of ice, or breaks the regularity of the figure of the cone.

The summit of Cotopaxi resembles the Sugar-loaf (Pan de azucar) which terminates the Peak of Teyde; but the height of its con is six times the height of that of the great volcano of the Island of Teneriffe.

The greater the regularity in the form of the cone of this volcano the more we are struck in finding, on the side to the south-east, a small mass of rock, half concealed under the snow, studded with points, and which the natives call the head of the Inca.

The origin of this singular denomination is very uncertain.

A popular tradition prevails in the country that this isolated rock was heretofore a part of the top of Cotopaxi.

The Indians relate that the volcano, at its first eruption, ejected far off a stony mass; which, like the cap of a dome, covered the enormous cavity that contains the subterraneous fire.

Some pretend that this extraordinary catastrophe took place a short time after the invasion of the kingdom of Quito by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui; and that the rock to the left of the volcano, is called the head of the Inca, because its fall was the ominous presage of the death of the conqueror.

Others, still more credulous, affirm that this mass of porphyry, with basis of pitchstone, was displaced in an explosion that happened at the very moment when the Inca Atahualpa was strangled by the Spaniards at Caxamarca.

letters.

The want of letters observed in the new continent, at the time of its second discovery by Christopher Columbus, leads to the idea that the tribes of the Tartar or Mongul race, which we may suppose to have passed from the east of Asia to America, were not in possession of alphabetical writing; or what is less probable, that, having relapsed into barbarism under the influence of a climate less favourable to the display of the understanding, they had lost this wonderful art, known only to a very small number of individuals.

We shall not here examine the question, whether the Devanagari alphabet is of remote antiquity on the banks of the Indus and the Ganges; or whether, as Strabo asserts from Megasthenes, the Hindoos were ignorant of writing before the conquests of Alexander.

Farther to the east and the north in the region of monosyllabic languages, as in that of the Tartarian, Samoiede, Ostiack, and Kamtschadale tongues, the use of letters, wherever it is at present found, was introduced very late.

It seems indeed probable that it was the Christian sect of Nestorians, who communicated the Stranghelo alphabet to the Oighours and the Manchou Tartars; an alphabet, which in the northern regions of Asia is still more recent than the Runic characters in the north of Europe.

We need not therefore suppose the communications between eastern Asia and America to have been of very remote antiquity, in order to comprehend why this latter part of the world had not been instructed in an art, which for a long series of ages was unknown, except in Egypt, in the Phoenician and Grecian colonies, and in the small space lying between the Mediterranean, the Oxus, and the Persian gulf.

The first missionaries who visited America, Valades and Acosta, have already called the Azteck paintings a writing similar to that of the Egyptians.

If Kircher, Warburton, and other learned men, have since contested the propriety of this expression, it is because they have not distinguished the paintings of a mixed kind, in which real hieroglyphics, sometimes curiological, sometimes tropical, are added to the natural 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 of Alexandria, the only one, the explanation of which has reached us, expressed by the hieroglyphics of a child, an old man, a vulture, a fish, and a hippopotamus, the following sentence, "You who are born, and who are to die, know, that the Eternal hates impudence." A Mexican, to express the same idea, would have represented the great spirit, Teotl, chastising a criminal; certain characters placed above two heads would have been sufficient to indicate the age of the child, and that of the old man; he would have individualized the action, but the style of his hieroglyphical paintings would not have furnished him with the means of giving a general expression to the sentiment of hatred and vengeance.

When we compare the Mexican paintings with the hieroglyphics that decorated the temples, the obelisks, and perhaps even the pyramids of Egypt; and reflect on the progressive steps which the human mind appears to have followed in the invention of graphic means fitted to express ideas; we see that the nations of America were very distant from that perfection which the Egyptians had obtained.

The Aztecks were indeed but little acquainted with simple hieroglyphics; they could represent the elements, and the relations of time and of place; but it is only by a great number of these characters, susceptible of being employed separately, that the painting of ideas becomes easy, and approximates to writing.

We find among the Aztecks the germes of phonetic characters: they knew how to write names, by uniting certain signs which are associated with sounds; this contrivance might have led them to the beautiful discovery of giving an alphabetic form to their simple hieroglyphics; but ages would have elapsed before these nations of mountaineers, who adhered to their manners and customs with the same invincible obstinacy as the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Hindoos, could have raised themselves to the decomposition of words, the analysis of sounds, the invention of an alphabet.

Among the Mexican people the figures and symbolic characters were not traced on separate leaves.

Whatever was the substance employed for manuscripts, they were seldom destined to form rolls, but were almost always folded in zigzag, in a particular manner, like the mounts of our fans.

Two tablets of light wood were pasted at the ends, one at top, the other at bottom, so that before the painting was unfolded the manuscript had the most perfect resemblance with our bound books.

By this arrangement, on opening a Mexican manuscript as we open our books, we can see only half of the characters at one time, those which are painted on the same side of the skin, or paper of maguey: to examine the whole of the pages, if the different folds of a band, which is often twelve or fifteen metres in length, can be called pages, we must extend the whole manuscript first from the left to the right, and then from the right to the left.

In this respect the Mexican paintings are perfectly similar to the Siamese manuscripts, preserved in the public library at Paris, which are also folded in zigzag.

At Mexico the use of painting and of paper of maguey was extended far beyond the limits of the empire of Montezuma, to the borders of the lake of Nicaragua, whither the Toltecks in their migrations had carried their language and their arts.

In the kingdom of Guatimala, the inhabitants of Teochiapan had preserved traditions, that went back to the epocha of a great deluge; after which their ancestors, led by a chief called Votan, had come from a country lying toward the north.

In the village of Teopixca there still existed in the sixteenth century descendants of the family of Votan, or Vodan, for these two names are the same, the Toltecks and the Aztecks not having the four consonants d, b, r, s, in their language.

They who have studied the history of the Scandinavian nations in the heroic times must be struck at finding in Mexico a name which recalls that of Wodan or Odin, who reigned among the Scythians, and whose race, according to the very remarkable assertion of Bede, "gave kings to a great number of nations."

mexican paintings.

From the researches I have made, it appears that there exist at present in Europe only six collections of Mexican paintings, those of the Escurial, Bologna, Veletri, Rome, Vienna, and Berlin.

The learned jesuit Fabrega, who is often cited in the works of Mr. Zoega, and whose manuscripts relating to the Azteck antiquities were communicated to me by the Chevalier Borgia, nephew to the Cardinal of that name, supposes that the archives of Simancas, in Spain, contain also some of these hieroglyphical paintings, which Robertson has so aptly denominated picture writings.

The collection preserved at the Escurial has been examined by Mr. Waddilove, chaplain to the English embassy at Madrid when Lord Grantham was ambassador.

It has the form of a book in folio; which may lead us to suspect that it is only a copy of a Mexican manuscript, for the originals I have examined are all of the size of volumes in quarto.

The objects represented seem to prove that the collection of the Escurial, like those of Italy and Vienna, are either astrological books or real rituals, which point out the religious ceremonies prescribed for particular days of the month.

At the bottom of each page is an explanation in Spanish, which has been added since the conquest.

The collection of Bologna is deposited in the library of the Institute of Sciences of that city.

We are unacquainted with its origin; but we read on the first page that this painting, which is 326 centimetres (eleven Roman palms) in length, was ceded, the 26th of December, 1665, by Count Valerio Zani to the Marquis of Caspi.

The characters, which are traced on a thick and ill prepared skin, seem in a great measure to allude to the form of the constellations, and to astrological notions.

There exists an engraved copy of this Codex Mexicanus of Bologna, in the Museum of Cardinal Borgia, at Veletri.

The collection of Vienna, which is sixty-five pages, is become celebrated since it fixed the attention of Dr. Robertson, who, in his classic work on the history of the New Continent, has published a few pages in outlines only, and without colouring.

We read on the first page of this Mexican manuscript that it was sent by King Emanuel of Portugal to Pope Clement the Seventh, and that it has since been in the hands of the Cardinals Hippolito de Medicis and Capuanus.

The Codex Mexicanus of the Borgian museum at Veletri is the finest of the Azteck manuscripts that I have examined.

The collection preserved in the royal library at Berlin contains different Azteck paintings, which I purchased during my abode in New Spain.

The twelfth plate gives two fragments of this collection; it contains the lists of tributes, genealogies, the history of the migrations of the Mexicans, and a calendar made at the beginning of the conquest, in which the simple hieroglyphics of the days are joined to figures of saints painted in the Azteck style.

The library of the Vatican at Rome possesses in the valuable collection of its manuscripts two Codices Mexicani, numbered 3738 and 3776, in the catalogue.

These collections, as well as the manuscript of Veletri, were unknown to Dr. Robertson, when he enumerated the Mexican paintings preserved in the different libraries of Europe.

Mercatus, in his description of the obelisks of Rome, relates that toward the end of the sixteenth century two collections of original paintings existed in the Vatican.

It would seem that one of these collections is entirely lost, unless it is that which is seen in the library of the Institute of Bologna; the other was found in 1785 by the jesuit Fabrega, after fifteen years search.

mexican theology.

The ninety-sixth page of the Codex Vaticanus, represents on the left an adoration: the deity has on a helmet, the ornaments of which are very remarkable: he is seated on a small bench, called icpalli, before a temple, of which only the top, or small chapel placed on the upper part of the pyramid, is represented.

The adoration consisted, at Mexico, as well as in the East, in the ceremony of touching the ground with the right hand, and carrying the left to the mouth.

In the drawing, No. 1, the homage is rendered by a genuflexion; the attitude of the figure, which prostrates itself before the temple, is found in several paintings of the Hindoos.

The group, No. 2, represents the celebrated serpentwoman, Cihuacohuatl, called also Quilaztli, or Tonacacihua, woman of our flesh: she is the companion of Tonacateuctli.

The Mexicans considered her as the mother of the human race; and, after the god of the celestial Paradise, Ometeuetli, she held the first rank among the divinities of Anahuac; we see her always represented with a great serpent.

Other paintings exhibit to us a featherheaded snake, cut in pieces by the great spirit, Tezcatlipoca, or by the Sun personified, the god Tonatiuh.

These allegories remind us of the ancient traditions of Asia.

In the woman and serpent of the Aztecks we think we perceive the Eve of the Semetic nations: in the snake cut in pieces, the famous serpent Kaliya, or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, when he took the form of Krishna.

The Tonatiuh of the Mexicans appears also to be identical with the Krishua of the Hindoos, recorded in the Bhagavata Purana, and with the Mithras of the Persians.

The most ancient traditions of nations go back to a state of things, when the earth, covered with bogs, was inhabited by snakes and other animals of gigantic bulk: the beneficent luminary, by drying up the soil, delivered the earth from these aquatic monsters.

Behind the serpent, who appears to be speaking to the goddess Cihuacohuatl, are two naked figures; they are of a different colour, and seem to be in the attitude of contending with each other.

We might be led to suppose, that the two vases, which we see at the bottom of the picture, one of which is overturned, is the cause of this contention.

The serpent woman was considered at Mexico as the mother of two twin children; these naked figures are perhaps the children of Cihuacohuatl; they remind us of the Cain and Abel of Hebrew tradition.

It is no way doubtful, that Nestorianism, mingled with the dogmata of the Bouddhistes and the Shamans, spread through Mantchou Tartary into the north-east of Asia: we may therefore suppose, with some appearance of reason, that Christian ideas have been communicated by the same means to the Mexican nations, especially to the inhabitants of that northern region, from which the Toltecks emigrated, and which we must consider as the officina virorum of the New World.

When we examine this question by the rules of the most rigid analysis, we find nothing among the Americans, which leads to the supposition, that the Asiatic nations migrated to the New Continent after the establishment of Christianity. I am very far from denying the possibility of these posterior communications; I am not ignorant that the Tchoutskis annually crossed Behring's Straits to make war on the inhabitants of the north-west coast of America; but I think I may affirm, from the knowledge we have acquired since the end of the last century of the sacred books of the Hindoos, that, in order to explain these resemblances of traditions, of which all the first missionaries speak, we have no need to recur to Western Asia, peopled by nations of the Semetic race; these same traditions, of high and venerable antiquity, are found both among the followers of Brahma, and among the Shamans of the eastern steppes of Tartary.

Notwithstanding these striking analogies existing between the nations of the New Continent, and the Tartar tribes who have adopted the religion of Bouddah, I think I discover in the mythology of the Americans, in the style of their paintings, in their languages, and especially in their external conformation, the descendants of a race of men, which, early separated from the rest of mankind, has followed for a lengthened series of ages, a peculiar road in the unfolding of its intellectual faculties, and in its tendency towards civilization.

chimborazo and carguairazo.

The group of Chimborazo and Carguairazo, has an absolute elevation of 2891 metres (1493 toises); it is only a sixth less elevated than the top of Etna.

The summit of Chimborazo does not therefore surpass the height of this plain more than 3640 metres, which is 84 metres less than the height of the top of Mount Blanc above the priory of Chamonix; for the difference between Chimborazo and Mount Blanc is nearly equal to that which is observed between the elevation of the plain of Tapia, and the bottom of the valley of Chamonix.

The top of the Peak of Teneriffe, compared with the level of the town of Oratava, is still more elevated than Chimborazo and Mount Blanc above Riobamba and Chamonix.

We distinguish three kinds of principal forms belonging to the high tops of the Andes.

The volcanoes which are yet burning, those which have but a single crater of extraordinary size, are conic mountains, with summits truncated in a greater or less degree: such is the figure of Cotopaxi, of Popocatepec, and the Peak of Orizaba.

Volcanoes, the summits of which have sunk 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, or Capac-Urcu, a mountain once more lofty than Chimborazo, and the destruction of which is considered as a memorable period in the natural history of the New Continent; such is the form also of Carguairazo, a great part of which fell in on the night of the 19th of July, 1698.

Torrents of water and mud then issued from the opened sides of the mountain, and laid waste the neighbouring country.

This dreadful catastrophe was accompanied by an earthquake, which, in the adjacent towns of Hambato, and Llactacunga, swallowed up thousands of inhabitants.

A third form of the high tops of the Andes, and the most majestic of the whole, is that of Chimborazo, the summit of which is circular; it reminds us of those paps without craters, which the elastic force of the vapours swells up in regions where the hollow crust of the globe is mined by subterraneous fires.

The aspect of mountains of granite has little analogy with that of Chimborazo.

The granitic summits are flattened hemispheres; the trappean porphyry forms slender cupolas.

Thus on the shore of the South Sea, after the long rains of winter, when the transparency of the air has suddenly increased, we see Chimborazo appear like a cloud at the horizon; it detaches itself from the neighbouring summits, and towers over the whole chain of the Andes, like that majestic dome, produced by the genius of Michael Angelo, over the antique monuments, which surround the Capitol.

Travellers who have approached the summits of Mont Blanc and Mont Rose are alone capable of feeling the character of this calm, majestic, and solemn scenery.

The bulk of Chimborazo is so enormous, that the part which the eye embraces at once near the limit of the eternal snows is seven thousand metres in breadth.

The extreme rarity of the strata of air, across which we see the tops of the Andes, contributes greatly to the splendour of the snow, and the magical effect of its reflection.

Under the tropics, at a height of five thousand metres, the azure vault of the sky appears of an indigo tint.

The outlines of the mountain detach themselves from the sky in this pure and transparent atmosphere, while the inferior strata of the air, reposing on a plain destitute of vegetation, which reflects the radiant heat, are vaporous, and appear to veil the middle ground of the landscape.

39,371 inches.

The elevated plain of Tapia, which extends to the east as far as the foot of the altar, and of Condorasto, is three thousand metres in height, nearly equal to that of Canigou, one of the highest summits of the Pyrennees.

A few plants of schinus, molle, cactus, agave, and molina, are scattered over the barren plain: and we see in the foreground lamas (camelus lacma) sketched from nature, and groups of Indians going to the market of Lican.

The flank of the mountain presents that gradation of vegetable life, which I have endeavoured to trace in my chart of the Geography of plants, and which may be followed on the western top of the Andes from the impenetrable groves of palm trees to the perpetual snows, bordered by thin layers of lichens.

At three thousand five hundred metres absolute height, the ligneous plants with coriaceous and shining leaves nearly disappear.

The region of shrubs is separated from that of the grasses by alpine plants, by tufts of nerteria, valerian, saxifrage, and lobelia, and by small cruciferous plants.

The grasses form a very broad belt, covered at intervals with snow, which remains but a few days.

This belt, called in the country the pajonal, appears at a distance, like a gilded yellow carpet.

Its colour forms an agreeable contrast with that of the scattered masses of snow; and is owing to the stalks and leaves of the grasses burnt by the rays of the sun in the seasons of great draught.

Above the pajonal lies the region of cryptogamus plants, which here and there cover the porphyritic rocks destitute of vegetable earth.

Farther on, at the limit of the perpetual ice, is the termination of organic life.

mexican calendar.

The civil year of the Aztecks was a solar year of three hundred and sixtyfive days, and was divided into eighteen months, each of twenty days.

After these eighteen months, or three hundred and sixty days, five complementary days were added, and the year began anew.

The names of Tonalpohualli or Cempohualilhuitl, which distinguished this civil calendar from the ritual calendar, sufficiently indicated its principal characters.

The first of these names signifies reckoning of the Sun, in opposition to the ritual calendar, called reckoning of the Moon, or Metzlapohualli: the second denomination is derived from cempohualli, twenty, and ilhuitl, festival; and it alludes, either to the twenty days contained in each month, or the twenty solemn festivals celebrated during the course of a civil year, in the teocallis, or houses of the gods.

The beginning of the civil day among the Aztecks was reckoned like that of the Persians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the greater part of the nations of Asia, except the Chinese, from sunrising.

It was divided into eight intervals, a division found among the Hindoos and the Romans; four of which were determined by the rising of the Sun, its setting, and its two passages across the meridian.

The rising was called yquiza tonatiuh; noon, nepantla tonatiuh; the setting, onaqui tonatiuh; and midnight, yohualnepantla.

The hieroglyphic of the day was a circle divided into four parts.

Although, under the parallel of the city of Mexico, the length of the day does not vary more than two hours twenty-one minutes, it is very certain, that the Mexican hours were originally unequal, like the planetary hours of the Jews, and all those which the Greek astronomers noted under the name of kairikai, in opposition to the isemerinai, equinoxial hours.

To correct the lunar year, and make it coincide with the solar year, eleven days, according to ancient custom, were added; which, by the edict of the Inca, were divided among the twelve moons.

According to this arrangement, it was scarcely possible, that four equal periods, into which the lunar months should be divided, could be seven days each, and correspond to the phases of the Moon.

The same historian, whose testimony is cited by M. Bailly in favor of the opinion, that the week of the Hindoos was known to the Americans, affirms, that, according to an ancient law of the Inca Pachacutec, there ought to be in each lunar month three days for festivals and for markets (catu); and that the people were to work, not seven, but eight consecutive days, and rest the ninth.

This is undoubtedly a division of a lunar month, or a sideral revolution of the Moon, into three small periods of nine days.

We shall observe, on this occasion, that the Japanese, a nation of the Tartar race, are equally unacquainted with the small period of seven days; while it is in use among the Chinese, who seem also aborigines of the elevated plain of Tartary, but who have long had intimate communications with Hindostan and Thibet.

their chronology.

The Mexicans were in possession of annals, that went back to eight centuries and a half beyond the epocha of the arrival of Cortez in the country of Anahuac.

We have already explained how these annals presented, in their subdivisions, sometimes a cycle of fifty-two years, at others a thalpilli of thirteen years, and at others a single year of two hundred and sixty days, contained in twenty small periods of thirteen days, according as the history was more or less minute.

The Toltecks had disappeared four hundred and sixty-five years before the arrival of Cortez; the nation which the Spaniards found settled in the valley of Mexico was of the Azteck race: what he knew of the Toltecks he could have learnt only from paintings, which they had left in the country of Anahuac; or from some dispersed familes, who, restrained by the love of their native soil, had not thought proper to share the chances of the emigration.

Let us now examine the ingenious but very complicated methods, of which these people made use to denote the year and the day of a cycle of fifty-two years.

This method is identic with that made use of by the Hindoos, the Thibetans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Asiatic people of the Tartar race; who also distinguished the months and the years by the correspondence of several periodical series, the number of the terms of which is not the same.

The Mexicans employ, for the cycle of years, the four following signs, which have the names of

Tochtli - a rabbit or hare,

Actal - a cane,

Tecpatl - a flint, or silex,

Calli - - a house.

The same contrivance of the concordance of two periodical series was employed to distinguish the days of the same year.

It appears, that originally among the Mexican nations, as well as among the Persians, each day of the month had a name, and a particular sign; these twenty signs recall to mind the yogas, which, in the astrological almanack of the Hindoos, we find added to the twenty-eight days of the lunar month.

In the Metztlapohualli, or reckoning of the Moon, of the Aztecks, they were distributed among the small cycles of the halflunations; so that a periodical series of thirteen terms, which were all ciphers, corresponded to a periodical series of twenty terms, which contained only hieroglyphical signs.

It is in this series of days, that we find the four grand signs--rabbit, cane, flint, and house, by which, as we have just seen, the years of a cycle were denoted; sixteen other signs of an inferior order were so distributed, that in an equal number of four they separated the grand signs one from the other.

wodan.

Votan, or Wodan, an American, seems to be a member of the same family with the Wods, or Odins, of the Goths, and nations of Celtic origin.

As Odin and Boudha, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, are probably one and the same person, it is curious to see the names of Boudvar, Wodans dag, (Wednesday), and Votan, denote in India, in Scandinavia, and Mexico, a day of a small period.

According to the ancient traditions, collected by the Bishop Francis Nunnez de la Vega; "the Wodan of the Chiapanese was grandson of that illustrious old man, who, at the time of the great deluge, in which the greater part of the human race perished, was saved on a raft together with his family."

Wodan co-operated in the construction of the great edifice, which had been undertaken by men to reach the skies; the execution of this rash project was interrupted; each family received from that time a different language, and the great spirit, Teotl, ordered Wodan, to go and people the country of Anahuac.

This American tradition reminds us of the Menou of the Hindoos, the Noah of the Hebrews, and the dispersion of the Couschites of Singar [the Cushites of Shinar].

Comparing this tradition either with those of the Hebrews and Indians preserved in Genesis and the two sacred Pouranas, or with the fable of Xelhua the Cholulain, and other facts cited in the course of this work, it is impossible to avoid being struck with the analogy, which exists between the old memorials of the people of Asia, and those of the New Continent.

tradition of the flood.

A great inundation, which began the year ce calli, the day 4 water (nahui atl), destroyed mankind.

This is the last of the great revolutions, which the world has undergone.

Men were transformed into fish, except one man and one woman, who saved themselves in the trunk of an ahahuete, or cupressus disticha.

The drawing represents the goddess of water, called Matlalcueje, or Chalchiukcueje, and considered as the companion of Tlaloc, descending towards the earth.

Coxcox, the Noah of the Mexicans, and his wife Xochiquetzal, are seated in a trunk of a tree, covered with leaves, and floating amidst the waters.

These four ages which are also designated under the name of suns, contain together eighteen thousand and twenty-eight years; that is to say, six thousand years more than the four Persian ages described in the Zend- Avesta. I no where find how many years had elapsed from the deluge of Coxcox to the sacrifice of Tlalixco, or till the reform of the Azteck calendar; but, however near we may suppose these two periods, we still find that the Mexicans attributed to the world a duration of more than twenty thousand years.

This duration certainly forms a contrast with the great period of the Hindoos, which consists of four millions three hundred and twenty thousand years; and still more with the cosmogonical fiction of the Thibetans, according to which mankind already compute eighteen revolutions, each of which has several padu, expressed by numbers of sixty-two ciphers.

It is nevertheless remarkable that we find an American people, who, according to the same system of the calendar in use among them on the arrival of Cortez, indicate the days and the years in which the world underwent great catastrophes farther back than twenty ages.

The history begins by the Deluge of Coxcox, or the fourth destruction of the world, which, according to the Azteck cosmogony, terminates the fourth of the great cycles, atonatiuh, the age of water.

This cataclysm took place, according to the two received chronological systems, one thousand four hundred and seventeen, or eighteen thousand and twenty-eight years after the beginning of the age of earth, tlaltonatiuh.

The enormous difference of these numbers ought less to astonish us, when we recollect the hypotheses, which in our days have been advanced by Bailly, Sir William Jones, and Bentley, on the duration of the five Yougas of the Hindoos.

Of the different nations that inhabit Mexico, paintings representing the deluge of Coxcox are found among the Aztecks, the Miztecks, the Zapotecks, the Tlascaltecks, and the Mechoacanese.

The Noah Xisuthrus, or Menou of these nations, is called Coxcox, Teo- Cipactli, or Tezpi.

He saved himself conjointly with his wife, Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft of ahuahuete (cupressus disticha).

The painting represents Coxcox in the midst of the water, lying in a bark.

The mountain, the summit of which, crowned by a tree, rises above the waters, is the Peak of Colhuacan, the Ararat of the Mexicans.

The horn, which is represented on the left, is the phonetic hieroglyphic of Colhuacan.

At the foot of the mountain appear the heads of Coxcox and his wife.

The latter of these is known by the two tresses in the form of horns, which, as we have often observed, denote the female sex.

The men born after the deluge were dumb: a dove, from the top of a tree, distributes among them tougues, represented under the form of small commas.

We must not confound this dove with the bird which brings Coxcox tidings, that the waters were dried up.

The people of Mechoacan preserved a tradition, according to which Coxcox, whom they called Tezpi, embarked in a spacious acalli with his wife, his children, several animals and grain, the preservation of which was of importance to mankind.

When the great spirit, Tezcatlipoca, ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi sent out from his bark a vulture, the zopilote (vultur aura).

This bird, which feeds on dead flesh, did not return on account of the great number of carcasses, with which the earth, recently dried up, was strewed.

Tezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the humming bird, alone returned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves; Tezpi seeing that fresh verdure began to clothe the soil, quitted his bark near the mountain of Colhuacan.

These traditions, we here repeat, remind us of others of high and venerable antiquity.

The sight of marine substances, found even on the loftiest summits, might give men, who have had no communication, the idea of great inundations, which for a certain time extinguished organic life on the earth: but ought we not to acknowledge the traces of a common origin, wherever cosmogonical ideas, and the first traditions of nations, offer striking analogies even in the minutest circumstances? does not the humming-bird of Tezpi remind us of Noah's dove, that of Deucalion, and the birds, which, according to Berosus, Xisuthrus sent out from his ark, to see whether the waters had run off, and whether he might erect altars to the protecting divinities of Chaldea?

bochica.

In the description of the cataract of Tequendama, we have spoken of that marvellous personage, known in the American mythology under the name of Bochica, or Idacanzas, who opened a passage for the waters of the lake of Funzha, assembled the wandering tribes into a social state, introduced the worship of the Sun, and, like the Peruvian Manco-Capac, and the Mexican Quetzalcoatl, became the legislator of the Muyscas.

These same traditions relate, that Bochica, son and emblem of the Sun, high priest of Sogamozo, or Iraca, seeing the chiefs of the different Indian tribes disputing for the supreme authority, advised them to choose for zaque, or sovereign, one among them called Huncahua, revered on account of his wisdom and justice.

The advice of the high priest was universally adopted; and Huncahua, who reigned two hundred and fifty years, subdued the whole of the country that extends from the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos to the mountains of Opon.

Bochica, devoting himself to a life of severe penance, lived a hundred Muysca cycles, or two thousand years.

He disappeared mysteriously at Iraca, to the east of Tunja.

This town, which was then the most populous in the country, was founded by Huncahua, the first of the dynasty of the zaques of Cundinamurca; and took the name of Hunca, from its founder, which the Spaniards afterward changed into that of Tunca, or Tunja.

The form of government given by Bochica to the inhabitants of Bogota is very remarkable from its analogy with those of Japan and Thibet.

The Incas of Peru united in their person the temporal and spiritual powers.

The children of the Sun were both priests and kings.

At Cundinamurca, at a period probably anterior to Manco-Capac, Bochica had constituted the four chiefs of tribes, Gameza, Busbanca, Pesca, and Toca, electors; and ordered, that, after his death, these electors, and their descendants, should have the right of choosing the high priest of Iraca.

The pontiffs, or lamas, the successors of Bochica, were considered as heirs of his virtue and sanctity; and such as Cholula, in the time of Montezuma, was to the Aztecks, Iraca had been to the Muyscas.

The people thronged in crowds to offer presents to the high priest, visiting those places which were consecrated by the miracles of Bochica; and amidst the horrors of the most sanguinary warfare, the pilgrims enjoyed the protection of those princes, through whose territories they passed to visit the sanctuary (chunsua), and prostrate themselves at the feet of the lama, who presided there.

The temporal chief, called zaque of Tunja, to whom the zippa, or princes, of Bogota, paid an annual tribute, and the pontiff of Iraea, were consequently two distinct potentates, as the emperor and dairi are in Japan.

Bochica was not only considered as the founder of a new worship and lawgiver of the Muyscas; as emblem of the sun he regulated the seasons, and to him was attributed the invention of the calendar.

He had prescribed also the order of the sacrifices, which were to be celebrated at the end of the smail cycles, on account of the fifth lunar intercalation.

The least division of time among the Muyscas was a period of three days.

The week of seven days was unknown in America, as well as in part of eastern Asia.

On the first day of this small period a great market was held at Turmeque.