Notes

Lewis H. Morgan, Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines, p. 222.

See vol. i. chap, iv., and, for Ximenes, Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” part ii. chap. vi.

In this edition placed immediately after the Introduction.

Extensive indeed, if we may trust Archbishop Lorenzana, who tells us, “It is doubtful if the country of new Spain does not border on Tartary and Greenland;—by the way of California, on the former, and by New Mexico, on the latter”! Historia de Nueva-España (México, 1770), p. 38, nota.{} {}[The limits fixed by historical writers to the territories of the Aztec Confederacy vary startlingly. Prescott’s estimate is too large. Lewis H. Morgan (Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines, p. 223) considers its land area to have been about that of Rhode Island—the smallest State in the American Union—i.e., about 1250 square miles. Medio tutissimus ibis. The term Empire is misleading. The states of Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Guerrero, and much of La Puebla, in modern Mexico, almost surround the so-called Empire of Montezuma. Possibly the tributary pueblos may have covered an area equal to that of the State of Massachusetts.—M.]

I have conformed to the limits fixed by Clavigero. He has, probably, examined the subject with more thoroughness and fidelity than most of his countrymen, who differ from him, and who assign a more liberal extent to the monarchy. (See his Storia antica del Messico (Cesena, 1780), dissert. 7.) The abbé, however, has not informed his readers on what frail foundations his conclusions rest. The extent of the Aztec empire is to be gathered from the writings of historians since the arrival of the Spaniards, and from the picture-rolls of tribute paid by the conquered cities; both sources extremely vague and defective. See the MSS. of the Mendoza collection, in Lord Kingsborough’s magnificent publication (Antiquities of Mexico, comprising Facsimiles of Ancient Paintings and Hieroglyphics, together with the Monuments of New Spain. London, 1830). The difficulty of the inquiry is much increased by the fact of the conquests having been made, as will be seen hereafter, by the united arms of three powers, so that it is not always easy to tell to which party they eventually belonged.

Eighteen to twenty thousand, according to Humboldt, who considers the Mexican territory to have been the same with that occupied by the modern intendancies of Mexico, Puebla, Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, and Valladolid. (Essai politique sur le Royaume de Nouvelle-Espagne (Paris, 1825), tom. i. p. 196.) This last, however, was all, or nearly all, included in the rival kingdom of Michoacán, as he himself more correctly states in another part of his work. Comp. tom. ii. p. 164.

[Immediate decay follows death. All traces of a buried corpse vanish in three or four years.—M.]

The traveller who enters the country across the dreary sand-hills of Vera Cruz will hardly recognize the truth of the above description. He must look for it in other parts of the tierra caliente. Of recent tourists, no one has given a more gorgeous picture of the impressions made on his senses by these sunny regions than Latrobe, who came on shore at Tampico (Rambler in Mexico (New York, 1836), chap. 1),—a traveller, it may be added, whose descriptions of man and nature in our own country, where we can judge, are distinguished by a sobriety and fairness that entitle him to confidence in his delineation of other countries.

This long extent of country varies in elevation from 5570 to 8856 feet,—equal to the height of the passes of Mount Cenis or the Great St. Bernard. The table-land stretches still three hundred leagues farther, before it declines to a level of 2624 feet. Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. i. pp. 157, 255.{} {}[“The Continental range of Humboldt does not exist. The Andean system ends in northern Colombia. The Rocky Mountain system ends in the plateau south of the City of Mexico. The system between lies across the trend of the other two systems and differs from them in origin. It belongs to the same chain which crops up in the Antilles, i.e., to the system appearing in Martinique and Santa Lucia.”—Robert T. Hill, of U. S. Geological Survey, in Century Magazine, July, 1902.—M.]

About 62° Fahrenheit, or 17° Réaumur. (Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. i. p. 273.) The more elevated plateaus of the table-land, as the Valley of Toluca, about 8500 feet above the sea, have a stern climate, in which the thermometer, during a great part of the day, rarely rises beyond 45° F. Idem (loc. cit.), and Malte-Brun (Universal Geography, Eng. trans., book 83), who is, indeed, in this part of his work, but an echo of the former writer.

The elevation of the Castiles, according to the authority repeatedly cited, is about 350 toises, or 2100 feet above the ocean. (Humboldt’s Dissertation, apud Laborde, Itinéraire descriptif de l’Espagne (Paris, 1827), tom. i. p. 5.) It is rare to find plains in Europe of so great a height.

Archbishop Lorenzana estimates the circuit of the Valley at ninety leagues, correcting at the same time the statement of Cortés, which puts it at seventy, very near the truth, as appears from the result of M. de Humboldt’s measurement, cited in the text. Its length is about eighteen leagues, by twelve and a half in breadth. (Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 29.—Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 101.) Humboldt’s map of the Valley of Mexico forms the third in his “Atlas géographique et physique,” and, like all the others in the collection, will be found of inestimable value to the traveller, the geologist, and the historian.

Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. pp. 29, 44-49.—Malte-Brun, book 85. This latter geographer assigns only 6700 feet for the level of the Valley, contradicting himself (comp. book 83), or rather Humboldt, to whose pages he helps himself plenis manibus, somewhat too liberally, indeed, for the scanty references at the bottom of his page.

Torquemada accounts in part for this diminution by supposing that, as God permitted the waters, which once covered the whole earth, to subside after mankind had been nearly exterminated for their iniquities, so he allowed the waters of the Mexican lake to subside, in token of good will and reconciliation, after the idolatrous races of the land had been destroyed by the Spaniards! (Monarchía Indiana (Madrid, 1723), tom. i. p. 309.) Quite as probable, if not as orthodox, an explanation, may be found in the active evaporation of these upper regions, and in the fact of an immense drain having been constructed, during the lifetime of the good father, to reduce the waters of the principal lake and protect the capital from inundation.

[It is perhaps to be regretted that, instead of a meagre notice of the Toltecs with a passing allusion to earlier races, the author did not give a separate chapter to the history of the country during the ages preceding the Conquest. That history, it is true, resting on tradition or on questionable records mingled with legendary and mythological relations, is full of obscurity and doubt. But whatever its uncertainty in regard to details, it presents a mass of general facts supported by analogy and by the stronger evidence of language and of the existing relics of the past. The number and diversity of the architectural and other remains found on the soil of Mexico and the adjacent regions, and the immense variety of the spoken languages, with the vestiges of others that have passed out of use,—all perhaps derived originally from a common stock, but exhibiting different stages of development or decay, and capable of being classified into several distinct families,—point to conclusions that render the subject one of the most attractive fields for critical investigation.

[The uncertainty is not diminished by our being told that Tollan, Tullan, Tulan, or Tula (called also Tlapallan and Huehuetlapallan) was the original seat of this people, since we are still left in doubt whether the country so designated—like Aztlan, the supposed point of departure of the Aztecs—is to be located in New Mexico, California, the northwestern extremity of America, or in Asia. M. Brasseur de Bourbourg (whose later speculations, in which the name plays a conspicuous part, will be noticed more appropriately in the Appendix) found in the Quiché manuscripts mention of four Tollans, one of them “in the east, on the other side of the sea.” “But,” he adds, “in what part of the world is it to be placed? C’est là encore une question bien difficile à résoudre.” (Hist. des Nations civilisées du Mexique, tom. i. pp. 167, 168.) Nor will the etymology much help us. According to Buschmann, Tollan is derived from tolin, reed, and signifies “place of reeds,”—“Ort der Binsen, Platz mit Binsen gewachsen, juncetum.” (Über die aztekischen Ortsnamen, S. 682.) He refers, however, to a different derivation, suggested by a writer who has made it the basis of one of those extraordinary theories which are propounded from time to time, to account for the first diffusion of the human race, and more particularly for the original settlement of America.

Anahuac, according to Humboldt, comprehended only the country between the fourteenth and twenty-first degrees of north latiude. (Essai politique, tom. i. p. 197.) According to Clavigero, it included nearly all since known as New Spain. (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 27.) Veytia uses it, also, as synonymous with New Spain. (Historia antigua de Méjico (Méjico, 1836), tom. i. cap. 12.) The first of these writers probably allows too little, as the latter do too much, for its boundaries. Ixtlilxochitl says it extended four hundred leagues south of the Otomi country. (Hist. Chichimeca, MS., cap. 73.) The word Anahuac signifies near the water. It was, probably, first applied to the country around the lakes in the Mexican Valley, and gradually extended to the remoter regions occupied by the Aztecs and the other semi-civilized races. Or possibly the name may have been intended, as Veytia suggests (Hist. antig., lib. 1, cap. 1), to denote the land between the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific.{} {} [This suggestion of Veytia is unworthy of attention,—refuted by the actual application and appropriateness of the name, and by the state of geographical knowledge and ideas at the period when it must have originated.

Clavigero talks of Boturini’s having written “on the faith of the Toltec historians.” (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 128.) But that scholar does not pretend to have ever met with a Toltec manuscript himself, and had heard of only one in the possession of Ixtlilxochitl. (See his Idea de una nueva Historia general de la América Septentrional (Madrid, 1746), p. 110.) The latter writer tells us that his account of the Toltec and Chichimec races was “derived from interpretation” (probably of the Tezcucan paintings), “and from the traditions of old men;” poor authority for events which had passed centuries before. Indeed, he acknowledges that their narratives were so full of absurdity and falsehood that he was obliged to reject nine-tenths of them. (See his Relaciones, MS., no. 5.) The cause of truth would not have suffered much, probably, if he had rejected nine-tenths of the remainder.{} {} [Ixtlilxochitl’s language does not necessarily imply that he considered any of the relations he had received as false or absurd, nor does he say that he had rejected nine-tenths of them.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 2.—Idem, Relaciones, MS., no. 2.—Sahagun, Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva-España (México, 1829), lib. 10, cap. 29.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 1, cap. 27.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 10, cap. 29.

Sahagun, ubi supra.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 1, cap. 14.

Description de l’Égypte (Paris, 1890), Antiquités, tom. i. cap. 1. Veytia has traced the migrations of the Toltecs with sufficient industry, scarcely rewarded by the necessarily doubtful credit of the results. Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 21-33.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 73.

Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 1, cap. 33.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap 3.—Idem, Relaciones, MS., nos. 4, 5.—Father Torquemada—perhaps misinterpreting the Tezcucan hieroglyphics—has accounted for this mysterious disappearance of the Toltecs by such fee-faw-fum stories of giants and demons as show his appetite for the marvellous was fully equal to that of any of his calling. See his Monarch. Ind., lib. 1, cap. 14.

[This supposition, neither adopted nor rejected in the text, was, as Mr. Tylor remarks, “quite tenable at the time that Prescott wrote,” being founded on the statements of early writers and partially supported by the conclusions of Mr. Stephens, who believed that the ruined cities of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala dated from a comparatively recent period, and were still flourishing at the time of the Spanish Conquest; and that their inhabitants, the ancestors, as he contends, of the degenerate race that now occupies the soil, were of the same stock and spoke the same language as the Mexicans. (Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan.) But these opinions have been refuted by later investigators. Orozco y Berra, in an elaborate and satisfactory examination of the question, discusses all the evidence relating to it, compares the remains in the southern provinces with those of the Valley of Mexico, points out the essential differences in the architecture, sculpture, and inscriptions, and arrives at the conclusion that there was “no point of contact or resemblance” between the two civilizations.

Tezcuco signifies “place of detention;” as several of the tribes who successively occupied Anahuac were said to have halted some time at the spot. Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 10.{} {} [“Über die Etymologie lässt sich nichts sicheres sagen,” says Buschmann, “so zuversichtlich auch Prescott, wohl nach Ixtlilxochitl, den Namen durch place of detention übersetzt.” Uber die aztekischen Ortsnamen, S. 697.—K.]

[It is difficult to reconcile the two statements that the Toltecs “were the true fountains of the civilization which distinguished this part of the continent in later times,” and that they “disappeared from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it,” leaving an interval of more than a century before the appearance of the Aztecs and the Acolhuans. If the latter received from the former the knowledge of those arts in which they speedily rivalled them, it must have been by more direct communication and transmission than can be inferred from the mention of a small fraction of the Toltec population as remaining in the country,—a fact which has itself the appearance of having been invented to meet the difficulty. Orozco y Berra compares this transitional period with that which followed the overthrow of the Roman Empire; but if in the former case there was, in his own words, “no conquest, but only an occupation, no war because no one to contend with,” the analogy altogether fails. Brasseur de Bourbourg reduces the interval between the departure of the Toltecs and the arrival of the Chichimecs to a few years, and supposes that a considerable number of the former inhabitants remained scattered through the Valley.

The historian speaks, in one page, of the Chichimecs burrowing in caves, or, at best, in cabins of straw, and, in the next, talks gravely of their señoras, infantas, and caballeros!{*} Ibid., cap. 9, et seq.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 1-10.—Camargo, Historia de Tlascala, MS.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 9-20.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 29-54.

[Some recent writers have contended that Mexico must have been peopled originally by migrations from the South. Aztec names and communities, and traces of Toltec settlements long anterior to the occupation of Anahuac by the same people, are found in several parts of Central America. The most primitive traditions, as well as the remains of the earliest civilization, belong also to the same quarter. This latter fact, however, is considered by Orozco y Berra as itself an evidence of the migrations having been from the North, the first comers having been naturally attracted southward by a warmer climate and more fertile soil, or pushed onward in this direction by successive invasions from behind. Contradictory inferences have in like manner been drawn from the existence of Aztec remains and settlements in New Mexico and Arizona. All that can be said with confidence is that neither of the opposing theories rests on a secure and sufficient basis.—K.]

These were the Colhuans, not Acolhuans, with whom Humboldt, and most writers since, have confounded them.{} See his Essai politique, tom. i. p. 414; ii. p. 37. {} [Humboldt, strictly speaking, has not confounded the Colhuans with the Acolhuans, but has written, in the places cited, the latter name for the former. “Letzterer Name,” says Buschmann, “ist der erstere mit dem Zusatz von atl Wasser,—Wasser Colhuer.” (Uber die aztekischen Ortsnamen, S. 690.) Yet the two tribes, according to the same authority, were entirely distinct, one alone—though which, he is unable to determine—being of the Nahuatlac race. Orozco y Berra, however, makes them both of this stock, the Acolhuans being one of the main branches, the Colhuans merely the descendants of the Toltec remnant in Anahuac.—K.]

[This is not quite correct, since the form used in the letters of Cortés and other early documents is Temixtitan, which is explained as a corruption of Tenochtitlan. The letters x and ch are convertible, and have the same sound,—that of the English sh. Mexico is Mexitl with the place-designation co, tl final being dropped before an affix.—K.]

Clavigero gives good reasons for preferring the etymology of Mexico above noticed, to various others. (See his Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 168, nota.) The name Tenochtitlan signifies tunal (a cactus) on a stone. Esplicacion de la Col. de Mendoza, apud Antiq. of Mexico, vol. iv.

“Datur hæc venia antiquitati,” says Livy, “ut, miscendo humana divinis, primordia urbium augustiora faciat.” Hist. Præf.—See, for the above paragraph, Col. de Mendoza, plate 1, apud Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i.,—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 10,—Toribio, Historia de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 8,—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 15.—Clavigero, after a laborious examination, assigns the following dates to some of the prominent events noticed in the text. No two authorities agree on them; and this is not strange, considering that Clavigero—the most inquisitive of all—does not always agree with himself. (Compare his dates for the coming of the Acolhuans, tom. i. p. 147, and tom. iv., dissert. 2:)— A. D. The Toltecs arrived in Anahuac648 They abandoned the country1051 The Chichimecs arrived1170 The Acolhuans arrived about1200 The Mexicans reached Tula1196 They founded Mexico1325 See his dissert. 2, sec. 12. In the last date, the one of most importance, he is confirmed by the learned Veytia, who differs from him in all the others. Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 15.

[In a somewhat similar way was founded the Italian Venice. It was the fear of death at the hands of Attila and his Huns that caused the peopling of the islands among the lagoons of the Adriatic. It was the easy subsistence the lagoons afforded that caused the steady growth of the Italian village.—M.]

[This confederacy occupied one of the strongest defensive positions ever held by Indians. It gradually extended its sway over a large part of the Mexican territory. This “sway,” however, as Fiske points out, was not a military occupation of the country. It was a “system of plunder enforced by terror.”—M.]

The loyal Tezcucan chronicler claims the supreme dignity for his own sovereign, if not the greatest share of the spoil, by this imperial compact. (Hist. Chich., cap. 32.) Torquemada, on the other hand, claims one-half of all the conquered lands for Mexico. (Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 40.) All agree in assigning only one-fifth to Tlacopan; and Veytia (Hist. antig., lib. 3, cap. 3) and Zurita (Rapport sur les différentes Classes de Chefs de la Nouvelle-Espagne, trad. de Ternaux (Paris, 1840), p. 11), both very competent critics, acquiesce in an equal division between the two principal states in the confederacy. An ode, still extant, of Nezahualcoyotl, in its Castilian version, bears testimony to the singular union of the three powers: “solo se acordarán en las Naciones lo bien que gobernáron las tres Cabezas que el Imperio honráron.” Cantares del Emperador

See the plans of the ancient and modern capital, in Bullock’s “Mexico,” first edition. The original of the ancient map was obtained by that traveller from the collection of the unfortunate Boturini; if, as seems probable, it is the one indicated on page 13 of his Catalogue, I find no warrant for Mr. Bullock’s statement that it was the one prepared for Cortés by the order of Montezuma.

[The first man chosen to be the chief of men (tlacatecuhtli), or superior officer of the confederacy, was Acamapichtli. His election took place in 1375, and he is sometimes called by European writers the “founder of the confederacy.” His name, translated, was “Handful of Reeds.” The succession of “chiefs of men” was as follows: 1.Acamapichtli (Handful of Reeds)1375 2.Huitzilihuitl (Humming Bird)1403 3.Chimalpopoca (Smoking Shield)1414 4.Izcoatzin (Obsidian Snake)1427 5.Montezuma I (Angry Chief)1436 6.Axayacatl (Face in the Water)1464 7.Tizoc (Wounded Leg)1477 8.Ahuitzotl (Water Rat)1486 9.Montezuma II1502 10.Cuitlahuatzin1520 11.Guatemotzin1520 M.]

Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. lib. 2.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., tom. i. lib. 2.—Boturini, Idea, p. 146.—Col. of Mendoza, Part 1, and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, apud Antiq. of Mexico, vols. i., vi.—Machiavelli has noticed it as one great cause of the military successes of the Romans, “that they associated themselves, in their wars, with other states, as the principal,” and expresses his astonishment that a similar policy should not have been adopted by ambitious republics in later times. (See his Discorsi sopra T. Livio, lib. 2, cap. 4, apud Opere (Geneva, 1798).) This, as we have seen above, was the very course pursued by the Mexicans.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.

[Robertson, in his History of America, was the first man to question the correctness of the judgment passed by the Spanish chroniclers upon the Aztec institutions. Subsequent American writers gave louder expression to his doubts. As has been said in the notes upon the preceding chapter, Mr. Morgan proved conclusively that the so-called “empire” was no empire at all, but only a confederacy of three tribes. Mr. Morgan, however, was sometimes led into inaccuracy and extravagance of statement because of his desire to place all the American aborigines on the same institutional plane. Adolf Bandelier, pupil and disciple of Morgan, persevering and accurate scholar, investigated the subject in an entirely unprejudiced way and with a thoroughness which forces men to place almost implicit confidence in his conclusions. It is well here to summarize those conclusions. The Mexican confederacy was made up of three tribes, the Aztecs, the Tezcucans, and the Tlacopans, who dwelt in neighboring pueblos. Of these tribes the Aztecs and Tezcucans were superior to the Tlacopans. Spoils of war were always divided into five portions. The Tlacopans took one, their allies shared equally the other four parts. The Indian pueblos generally were designed to withstand a protracted siege, but the Mexican pueblos were almost impregnable. It is not likely that any other Indian tribes could have captured them.

This was an exception.—In Egypt, also, the king was frequently taken from the warrior caste, though obliged afterwards to be instructed in the mysteries of the priesthood: ὁ δὲ ἐκ μαχίμων ἀποδεδειγένος εὐθὺς ἐγίνετο τῶν ίέρων. Plutarch, de Isid. et Osir., sec. 9.

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 18; lib. 11, cap. 27.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 112.—Acosta, Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies, Eng. trans. (London, 1604).—According to Zurita, an election by the nobles took place only in default of heirs of the deceased monarch. (Rapport, p. 15.) The minute historical investigation of Clavigero may be permitted to outweigh this general assertion.

[“Chief of men.”—M.]

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 9, 10, 14; lib. 8, cap. 31, 34.—See, also, Zurita, Rapport, pp. 20-23.—Ixtlilxochitl stoutly claims this supremacy for his own nation. (Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 34.) His assertions are at variance with facts stated by himself elsewhere, and are not countenanced by any other writer whom I have consulted.

[The spacious palace in which the “chief of men” lived was the chief communal house of the clan. The “privy council” was made up of the clan officers specified on page 33.—M.]

Sahagun, who places the elective power in a much larger body, speaks of four senators, who formed a state council. (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 30.) Acosta enlarges the council beyond the number of the electors. (Lib. 6, ch. 26.) No two writers agree.

[There was, according to Bandelier, no such thing as a “body-guard.” Guards were unknown. This was evidenced when Montezuma was captured. No “body-guard” attempted his rescue. Bandelier’s conclusions should be kept steadily in mind in reading this chapter. The “distinct class of nobles, with large landed possessions,” were only the principal officers of the tribe, who were of course of the same “kin” as the so-called Aztec monarch. The great caciques, with thousands of vassals, were tribal officers leading tribal warriors. The “estates” were all held by the tribe, and were all subject to tribute.—M.]

Zurita enumerates four orders of chiefs, all of whom were exempted from imposts and enjoyed very considerable privileges. He does not discriminate the several ranks with much precision. Rapport, p. 47, et seq.

See, in particular, Herrera, Historia general de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra firme del Mar Océano (Madrid, 1730), dec. 2, lib. 8, cap. 12.

Carta de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 110.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 89; lib. 14, cap. 6.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 121.—Zurita, Rapport, pp. 48, 65.—Ixtlilxochitl (Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 34) speaks of thirty great feudal chiefs, some of them Tezcucan and Tlacopan, whom he styles “grandees of the empire”! He says nothing of the great tail of 100,000 vassals to each, mentioned by Torquemada and Herrera.

Macehual,—a word equivalent to the French word roturier. Nor could fiefs originally be held by plebeians in France. See Hallam’s Middle Ages (London, 1819), vol. ii. p. 207.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., ubi supra.—Zurita, Rapport, ubi supra.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 122-124.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 7.—Gomara, Crónica de Nueva-España, cap. 199, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Boturini (Idea, p. 165) carries back the origin of fiefs in Anahuac to the twelfth century. Carli says, “Le système politique y étoit féodal.” In the next page he tells us, “Personal merit alone made the distinction of the nobility”! (Lettres Américaines, trad. Fr. (Paris, 1788), tom. i. let. 11.) Carli was a writer of a lively imagination.

[There was no such thing as feudalism among the Aztecs. There could not be where the communism which the clan system implies prevailed. Feudalism was a social-political system based upon land. Under it there was a well-defined gradation of ranks, and each lower was bound to the next higher order by protection given in return for service rendered. Moreover, where feudalism prevailed the ownership of the land was vested in one person while the occupancy belonged to another. Feudalism exalted the individual and assured to each man his rights. The clan knew nothing whatever of individual rights. When the conception of personal ownership was developed, and kinship ceased to be the bond which held men together, the clan system of communal living of necessity passed away. But among the Aztecs the feudal conception of personal property never was developed. The Spaniards, knowing no civilization but their own, naturally supposed that the Aztec institutions were similar to the Spanish, and historians generally accepted that view.—M.]

[See summary of Bandelier’s studies, p. 36.—M.]

This magistrate, who was called cihuacoatl,{} was also to audit the accounts of the collectors of the taxes in his district. (Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 127.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 11, cap. 25.) The Mendoza Collection contains a painting of the courts of justice under Montezuma, who introduced great changes in them. (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i., Plate 70.) According to the interpreter, an appeal lay from them, in certain cases, to the king’s council. Ibid., vol. vi. p. 79. {} [This word, a compound of cihuatl, woman, and coatl, serpent, was the name of a divinity, the mythical mother of the human species. Its typical application may have had reference to justice, or law, as the source of social order.—K.]

Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 127, 128.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., ubi supra.—In this arrangement of the more humble magistrates we are reminded of the Anglo-Saxon hundreds and tithings, especially the latter, the members of which were to watch over the conduct of the families in their districts and bring the offenders to justice. The hard penalty of mutual responsibility was not known to the Mexicans.

Zurita, so temperate, usually, in his language, remarks that, in the capital, “Tribunals were instituted which might compare in their organization with the royal audiences of Castile.” (Rapport, p. 93.) His observations are chiefly drawn from the Tezcucan courts, which in their forms of procedure, he says, were like the Aztec. (Loc. cit.)

Boturini, Idea, p. 87.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 11, cap. 26.—Zurita compares this body to the Castilian córtes. It would seem, however, according to him, to have consisted only of twelve principal judges, besides the king. His meaning is somewhat doubtful. (Rapport, pp. 94, 101, 106.) M. de Humboldt, in his account of the Aztec courts, has confounded them with the Tezcucan. Comp. Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples indigènes de l’Amérique (Paris, 1810), p. 55, and Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 128, 129.

“If this should be done now, what an excellent thing it would be!” exclaims Sahagun’s Mexican editor. Hist. de Nueva-España, tom. ii. p. 304, nota.—Zurita, Rapport, p. 102.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., ubi supra.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 67.

[There is a hint here of the “Compurgators” of the Germanic tribes.—M.]

Zurita, Rapport, pp. 95, 100, 103.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, loc. cit.—Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, pp. 55, 56.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 11, cap. 25.—Clavigero says the accused might free himself by oath: “il reo poteva purgarsi col giuramento.” (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 129.) What rogue, then, could ever have been convicted?

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.—These various objects had a symbolical meaning, according to Boturini, Idea, p. 84.

[Compare the “codes” of the Germanic races.—M.]

Paintings of the Mendoza Collection, Pl. 72, and Interpretation, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 87.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 12, cap. 7.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 130-134.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—They could scarcely have been an intemperate people, with these heavy penalties hanging over them. Indeed, Zurita bears testimony that those Spaniards who thought they were greatly erred. (Rapport, p. 112.) M. Ternaux’s translation of a passage of the Anonymous Conqueror, “aucun peuple n’est aussi sobre” (Recueil de Pièces relatives à la Conquête du Mexique, ap. Voyages, etc. (Paris, 1838), p. 54), may give a more favorable impression, however, than that intended by his original, whose remark is confined to abstemiousness in eating. See the Relatione, ap. Ramusio, Raccolta delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Venetia, 1554-1565).

In ancient Egypt the child of a slave was born free, if the father were free. (Diodorus, Bibl. Hist., lib. 1, sec. 80.) This, though more liberal than the code of most countries, fell short of the Mexican.

In Egypt the same penalty was attached to the murder of a slave as to that of a freeman. (Ibid., lib. 1, sec. 77.) Robertson speaks of a class of slaves held so cheap in the eye of the Mexican law that one might kill them with impunity. (History of America (ed. London, 1776), vol. iii. p. 164.) This, however, was not in Mexico, but in Nicaragua (see his own authority, Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 4, cap. 2), a distant country, not incorporated in the Mexican empire, and with laws and institutions very different from those of the latter.

[A “collared” slave was fastened at night to a wall by his wooden collar.—M.]

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 12, cap. 15; lib. 14, cap. 16, 17.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 14.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 134-136.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 38, and Relaciones, MS.—The Tezcucan code, indeed, as digested under the great Nezahualcoyotl, formed the basis of the Mexican, in the latter days of the empire. Zurita, Rapport, p. 95.

In this, at least, they did not resemble the Romans; of whom their countryman could boast, “Gloriari licet, nulli gentium mitiores placuisse pœnas.” Livy, Hist., lib. 1, cap. 28.

[For “crown lands” read “subject tribes”; for “king’s palaces,” “communal houses.”—M.]

The Tezcucan revenues were, in like manner, paid in the produce of the country. The various branches of the royal expenditure were defrayed by specified towns and districts; and the whole arrangements here, and in Mexico, bore a remarkable resemblance to the financial regulations of the Persian empire, as reported by the Greek writers (see Herodotus, Clio, sec. 192); with this difference, however, that the towns of Persia proper were not burdened with tributes, like the conquered cities. Idem, Thalia, sec. 97.

Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 172.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 89; lib. 14, cap. 7.—Boturini, Idea, p. 166.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 13.—The people of the provinces were distributed into calpulli, or tribes, who held the lands of the neighborhood in common. Officers of their own appointment parcelled out these lands among the several families of the calpulli; and on the extinction or removal of a family its lands reverted to the common stock, to be again distributed. The individual proprietor had no power to alienate them. The laws regulating these matters were very precise, and had existed ever since the occupation of the country by the Aztecs. Zurita, Rapport, pp. 51-62.

The following items of the tribute furnished by different cities will give a more precise idea of its nature:—20 chests of ground chocolate; 40 pieces of armor, of a particular device; 2400 loads of large mantles, of twisted cloth; 800 loads of small mantles, of rich wearing-apparel; 5 pieces of armor, of rich feathers; 60 pieces of armor, of common feathers; a chest of beans; a chest of chian; a chest of maize; 8000 reams of paper; likewise 2000 loaves of very white salt, refined in the shape of a mould, for the consumption only of the lords of Mexico; 8000 lumps of unrefined copal; 400 small baskets of white refined copal; 100 copper axes; 80 loads of red chocolate; 800 xícaros, out of which they drank chocolate; a little vessel of small turquoise stones; 4 chests of timber, full of maize; 4000 loads of lime; tiles of gold, of the size of an oyster, and as thick as the finger; 40 bags of cochineal; 20 bags of gold dust, of the finest quality; a diadem of gold, of a specified pattern; 20 lip-jewels of clear amber, ornamented with gold; 200 loads of chocolate; 100 pots or jars of liquid-amber; 8000 handfuls of rich scarlet feathers; 40 tiger-skins; 1600 bundles of cotton, etc., etc. Col. de Mendoza, part 2, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vols. i., vi.{} {} [From those too poor to pay the regular taxes, snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and vermin were exacted.

Mapa de Tributos, ap. Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España.—Tribute-roll, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i., and Interpretation, vol. vi., pp. 17-44.—The Mendoza Collection, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, contains a roll of the cities of the Mexican empire, with the specific tributes exacted from them. It is a copy made after the Conquest, with a pen, on European paper. (See Foreign Quarterly Review, No. XVII. Art. 4.) An original painting of the same roll was in Boturini’s museum. Lorenzana has given us engravings of it, in which the outlines of the Oxford copy are filled up, though somewhat rudely. Clavigero considers the explanations in Lorenzana’s edition very inaccurate (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 25), a judgment confirmed by Aglio, who has transcribed the entire collection of the Mendoza papers, in the first volume of the Antiquities of Mexico. It would have much facilitated reference to his plates if they had been numbered;—a strange omission!

The caciques who submitted to the allied arms were usually confirmed in their authority, and the conquered places allowed to retain their laws and usages. (Zurita, Rapport, p. 67.) The conquests were not always partitioned, but sometimes, singularly enough, were held in common by the three powers. Ibid., p. 11.

[Very few garrisons were ever quartered in subject pueblos. The warriors Cortés encountered in his second attack upon Mexico were not the garrisons of the cities, but special bodies sent out to meet the Spaniards. The “calpixqui,” or tax-gatherers, were spies as well as officers, and were hated as were the “publicans” in all lands where the taxes were “farmed.” The “chief of men” had many subordinates. His couriers were not infrequently outcasts. Bearing in mind the class of persons with whom he had to deal officially, and the fact that it was his function to represent the majesty of the clan on all public occasions, it is not remarkable that he should have conducted himself with such haughtiness as to lead the Spaniards to suppose that he was an absolute king. That he had really no kingly power was manifested when Montezuma was a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards. His special duty was to execute the commands of the tribal council.—M.]

Col. of Mendoza, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 17.—Carta de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 110.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 6, 8.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 13.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 18, 19.

The Hon. C. A. Murray, whose imperturbable good humor under real troubles forms a contrast, rather striking, to the sensitiveness of some of his predecessors to imaginary ones, tells us, among other marvels, that an Indian of his party travelled a hundred miles in four-and-twenty hours. (Travels in North America (New York, 1839), vol. i. p. 193.) The Greek who, according to Plutarch, brought the news of victory to Platæa, a hundred and twenty-five miles, in a day, was a better traveller still. Some interesting facts on the pedestrian capabilities of man in the savage state are collected by Buffon, who concludes, truly enough, “L’homme civilisé ne connaît pas ses forces.” (Histoire naturelle: De la Jeunesse.)

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 1.—The same wants led to the same expedients in ancient Rome, and still more ancient Persia. “Nothing in the world is borne so swiftly,” says Herodotus, “as messages by the Persian couriers;” which his commentator Valckenaer prudently qualifies by the exception of the carrier-pigeon. (Herodotus, Hist., Urania, sec. 98, nec non Adnot. ed. Schweighäuser.) Couriers are noticed, in the thirteenth century, in China, by Marco Polo. Their stations were only three miles apart, and they accomplished five days’ journey in one. (Viaggi di Marco Polo, lib. 2, cap. 20, ap. Ramusio, tom. ii.) A similar arrangement for posts subsists there at the present day, and excites the admiration of a modern traveller. (Anderson, British Embassy to China (London, 1796), p. 282.) In all these cases, the posts were for the use of government only.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, Apend., cap. 3.

[The general council of the tribe.—M.]

Zurita, Rapport, pp. 68, 120.—Col. of Mendoza, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 67; vol. vi. p. 74.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 1.—The reader will find a remarkable resemblance to these military usages in those of the early Romans. Com. Liv., Hist., lib. 1, cap. 32; lib. 4, cap. 30, et alibi.

[“Distinguished braves,” see note, p. 35.—M.]

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 4, 5.—Acosta, lib. 6, ch. 26.—Col. of Mendoza, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 65; vol. vi. p. 72.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.

“Their mail, if mail it may be called, was woven Of vegetable down, like finest flax, Bleached to the whiteness of new-fallen snow. . . . . . . . . . . Others, of higher office, were arrayed In feathery breastplates, of more gorgeous hue Than the gay plumage of the mountain-cock, Than the pheasant’s glittering pride. But what were these, Or what the thin gold hauberk, when opposed To arms like ours in battle?” Madoc, Part 1, canto 7. Beautiful painting! One may doubt, however, the propriety of the Welshman’s vaunt, before the use of fire-arms.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 27; lib. 8, cap. 12.—Relatione d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. p. 305.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., ubi supra.

Relatione d’un gentil’ huomo, ubi supra.

[That they might offer them as living sacrifices to their gods.—M.]

Col. of Mendoza, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 65, 66; vol. vi. p. 73.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 12.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte I. cap. 7.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 3.—Relatione d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, loc. cit.—Scalping may claim high authority, or, at least, antiquity. The Father of History gives an account of it among the Scythians, showing that they performed the operation, and wore the hideous trophy, in the same manner as our North American Indians. (Herodot., Hist., Melpomene, sec. 64.) Traces of the same savage custom are also found in the laws of the Visigoths, among the Franks, and even the Anglo-Saxons. (See Guizot, Cours d’Histoire moderne (Paris, 1829), tom. i. p. 283.)

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 67.

[The sick and the disabled were quartered and cared for in some of the great communal houses.—M.]

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 12, cap. 6; lib. 14, cap. 3.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.

Zurita is indignant at the epithet of barbarians bestowed on the Aztecs; an epithet, he says, “which could come from no one who had personal knowledge of the capacity of the people, or their institutions, and which in some respects is quite as well merited by the European nations.” (Rapport, p. 200, et seq.) This is strong language. Yet no one had better means of knowing than this eminent jurist, who for nineteen years held a post in the royal audiences of New Spain. During his long residence in the country he had ample opportunity of acquainting himself with its usages, both through his own personal observation and intercourse with the natives, and through the first missionaries who came over after the Conquest. On his return to Spain, probably about 1560, he occupied himself with an answer to queries which had been propounded by the government, on the character of the Aztec laws and institutions, and on that of the modifications introduced by the Spaniards. Much of his treatise is taken up with the latter subject. In what relates to the former he is more brief than could be wished, from the difficulty, perhaps, of obtaining full and satisfactory information as to the details. As far as he goes, however, he manifests a sound and discriminating judgment.

ποιήσαντες θεογονίην Ἐλλησι. Herodotus, Euterpe, sec. 53.—Heeren hazards a remark equally strong, respecting the epic poets of India, “who,” says he, “have supplied the numerous gods that fill her Pantheon.” Historical Researches, Eng. trans. (Oxford, 1833), vol. iii. p. 139.

The Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone has fallen into a similar train of thought, in a comparison of the Hindoo and Greek mythology, in his History of India, published since the remarks in the text were written. (See Book I. ch. 4.) The same chapter of this truly philosophic work suggests some curious points of resemblance to the Aztec religious institutions, that may furnish pertinent illustrations to the mind bent on tracing the affinities of the Asiatic and American races.

Ritter has well shown, by the example of the Hindoo system, how the idea of unity suggests, of itself, that of plurality. History of Ancient Philosophy, Eng. trans. (Oxford, 1838), Book II. ch. 1.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, passim.—Acosta, lib. 5, ch. 9.—Boturini, Idea, p. 8, et seq.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 1.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—The Mexicans, according to Clavigero, believed in an evil Spirit, the enemy of the human race, whose barbarous name signified “Rational Owl.” (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 2.) The curate Bernaldez speaks of the Devil being embroidered on the dresses of Columbus’s Indians, in the likeness of an owl. (Historia de los Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 131.) This must not be confounded, however, with the evil Spirit in the mythology of the North American Indians (see Heckewelder’s Account, ap. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, vol. i. p. 205), still less with the evil Principle of the Oriental nations of the Old World. It was only one among many deities, for evil was found too liberally mingled in the natures of most of the Aztec gods—in the same manner as with the Greeks—to admit of its personification by any one.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, cap. 1, et seq.—Acosta, lib. 5. ch. 9.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 6, cap. 21.—Boturini, Idea, pp. 27, 28.—Huitzilopochtli is compounded of two words, signifying “humming-bird,” and “left,” from his image having the feathers of this bird on its left foot (Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 17); an amiable etymology for so ruffian a deity.{*}—The fantastic forms of the Mexican idols were in the highest degree symbolical. See Gama’s learned exposition of the devices on the statue of the goddess found in the great square of Mexico. (Descripcion de las Dos Piedras (México, 1832), Parte 1, pp. 34-44.) The tradition respecting the origin of this god, or, at least, his appearance on earth, is curious. He was born of a woman. His mother, a devout person, one day, in her attendance on the temple, saw a ball of bright-colored feathers floating in the air. She took it, and deposited it in her bosom. She soon after found herself pregnant, and the dread deity was born, coming into the world, like Minerva, all armed,—with a spear in the right hand, a shield in the left, and his head surmounted by a crest of green plumes. (See Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 19, et seq.) A similar notion in respect to the incarnation of their principal deity existed among the people of India beyond the Ganges, of China, and of Thibet.

[For the Aztec myths our most valuable authority is the Historia de los Méxicanos por sus Pinturas, by Ramirez de Fuen-leal. This is taken directly from the sacred books of the Aztecs as explained by survivors of the Conquest. Bandelier, Archæological Tour, calls it the earliest statement of the Nahua myths. The other “sources” are Motolinía, Mendieta, Sahagun, Ixtlilxochitl, and Torquemada. Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii. ch. 7, sums them up admirably.

Codex Vaticanus, Pl. 15, and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Part 2, Pl. 2, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vols. i., vi.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, cap. 3, 4, 13, 14.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 6, cap. 24.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 1.—Gomara, Crónica de la Nueva-España, cap. 222, ap. Barcia, Historiadores primitivos de las Indias Occidentales (Madrid, 1749), tom. ii.—Quetzalcoatl signifies “feathered serpent.” The last syllable means, likewise, a “twin;” which furnished an argument for Dr. Siguenza to identify this god with the apostle Thomas (Didymus signifying also a twin), who, he supposes, came over to America to preach the gospel. In this rather startling conjecture he is supported by several of his devout countrymen, who appear to have as little doubt of the fact as of the advent of St. James, for a similar purpose, in the mother-country. See the various authorities and arguments set forth with becoming gravity in Dr. Mier’s dissertation in Bustamante’s edition of Sahagun (lib. 3, Suplem.), and Veytia (tom. i. pp. 160-200). Our ingenious countryman McCulloh carries the Aztec god up to a still more respectable antiquity, by identifying him with the patriarch Noah. Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of America (Baltimore, 1829), p. 233.{*}

Cod. Vat., Pl. 7-10, Antiq. of Mexico, vols. i., vi.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 1.—M. de Humboldt has been at some pains to trace the analogy between the Aztec cosmogony and that of Eastern Asia. He has tried, though in vain, to find a multiple which might serve as the key to the calculations of the former. (Vues des Cordillères, pp. 202-212.) In truth, there seems to be a material discordance in the Mexican statements, both in regard to the number of revolutions and their duration. A manuscript before me, of Ixtlilxochitl, reduces them to three, before the present state of the world, and allows only 4394 years for them (Sumaria Relacion, MS., No. 1); Gama, on the faith of an ancient Indian MS. in Boturini’s Catalogue (viii. 13), reduces the duration still lower (Descripcion de las Dos Piedras, Parte 1, p. 49, et seq.); while the cycles of the Vatican paintings take up near 18,000 years.—It is interesting to observe how the wild conjectures of an ignorant age have been confirmed by the more recent discoveries in geology, making it probable that the earth has experienced a number of convulsions, possibly thousands of years distant from each other, which have swept away the races then existing, and given a new aspect to the globe.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, Apend.—Cod. Vat., ap. Antiq. of Mexico, Pl. 1-5.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 48.—The last writer assures us “that, as to what the Aztecs said of their going to hell, they were right; for, as they died in ignorance of the true faith, they have, without question, all gone there to suffer everlasting punishment”! Ubi supra.

It conveys but a poor idea of these pleasures, that the shade of Achilles can say “he had rather be the slave of the meanest man on earth, than sovereign among the dead.” (Odyss., A. 488-490.) The Mahometans believe that the souls of martyrs pass, after death, into the bodies of birds, that haunt the sweet waters and bowers of Paradise. (Sale’s Koran (London, 1825), vol. i. p. 106.)—The Mexican heaven may remind one of Dante’s, in its material enjoyments; which, in both, are made up of light, music, and motion. The sun, it must also be remembered, was a spiritual conception with the Aztec:

It is singular that the Tuscan bard, while exhausting his invention in devising modes of bodily torture, in his “Inferno,” should have made so little use of the moral sources of misery. That he has not done so might be reckoned a strong proof of the rudeness of time, did we not meet with examples of it in a later day; in which a serious and sublime writer, like Dr. Watts, does not disdain to employ the same coarse machinery for moving the conscience of the reader.

[It should perhaps be regarded rather as evidence of a low civilization, since the absence of any strict ideas of retribution is a characteristic of the notions in regard to a future life entertained by savage races. See Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 76, et seq.—K.]

Carta del Lic. Zuazo (Nov. 1521), MS.—Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 8.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 45.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, Apend.—Sometimes the body was buried entire, with valuable treasures, if the deceased was rich. The “Anonymous Conqueror,” as he is called, saw gold to the value of 3000 castellanos drawn from one of these tombs. Relatione d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. p. 310.

This interesting rite, usually solemnized with great formality, in the presence of the assembled friends and relatives, is detailed with minuteness by Sahagun (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 37), and by Zuazo (Carta, MS.), both of them eye-witnesses. For a version of part of Sahagun’s account, see Appendix, Part 1, note 26.{*}

“¿Es posible que este azote y este castigo no se nos dá para nuestra correccion y enmienda, sino para total destruccion y asolamiento?” (Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 1.) “Y esto por sola vuestra liberalidad y magnificencia lo habeis de hacer, que ninguno es digno ni merecedor de recibir vuestra larguezas por su dignidad y merecimiento, sino que por vuestra benignidad.” (Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 2.) “Sed sufridos y reportados, que Dios bien os vé y responderá por vosotros, y él os vengará (á) sed humildes con todos, y con esto os hará Dios merced y tambien honra.” (Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 17.) “Tampoco mires con curiosidad el gesto y disposicion de la gente principal, mayormente de las mugeres, y sobre todo de las casadas, porque dice el refran que él que curiosamente mira á la muger adultera con la vista.” (Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 22.)

[On reviewing the remarkable coincidences shown in the above pages with the sentiments and even the phraseology of Scripture, we cannot but admit there is plausible ground for Mr. Gallatin’s conjecture that the Mexicans, after the Conquest, attributed to their remote ancestors ideas which more properly belonged to a generation coeval with the Conquest, and brought into contact with the Europeans. “The substance,” he remarks, “may be true; but several of the prayers convey elevated and correct notions of a Supreme Being, which appear to me altogether inconsistent with that which we know to have been their practical religion and worship.”{*} Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, i. 210.]

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, Apend.; lib. 3, cap. 9.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 8, cap. 20; lib. 9, cap. 3, 56.—Gomara, Crón., cap. 215, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 4.—Clavigero says that the high-priest was necessarily a person of rank. (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 37.) I find no authority for this, not even in his oracle, Torquemada, who expressly says, “There is no warrant for the assertion, however probable the fact may be.” (Monarch. Ind., lib. 9, cap. 5.) It is contradicted by Sahagun, whom I have followed as the highest authority in these matters. Clavigero had no other knowledge of Sahagun’s work than what was filtered through the writings of Torquemada and later authors.

[So, in the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Constantine deferred his baptism until he felt that his end was approaching.—M.]

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 1, cap. 12; lib. 6, cap. 7.—The address of the confessor, on these occasions, contains some things too remarkable to be omitted. “O merciful Lord,” he says, in his prayer, “thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let thy forgiveness and favor descend, like the pure waters of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor man has sinned, not from his own free will, but from the influence of the sign under which he was born.” After a copious exhortation to the penitent, enjoining a variety of mortifications and minute ceremonies by way of penance, and particularly urging the necessity of instantly procuring a slave for sacrifice to the Deity, the priest concludes with inculcating charity to the poor. “Clothe the naked and feed the hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee; for remember, their flesh is like thine, and they are men like thee.” Such is the strange medley of truly Christian benevolence and heathenish abominations which pervades the Aztec litany,—intimating sources widely different.

The Egyptian gods were also served by priestesses. (See Herodotus, Euterpe, sec. 54.) Tales of scandal similar to those which the Greeks circulated respecting them, have been told of the Aztec virgins. (See Le Noir’s dissertation, ap. Antiquités Mexicaines (Paris, 1834), tom. ii. p. 7, note.) The early missionaries, credulous enough certainly, give no countenance to such reports; and Father Acosta, on the contrary, exclaims, “In truth, it is very strange to see that this false opinion of religion hath so great force among these young men and maidens of Mexico, that they will serve the Divell with so great rigor and austerity, which many of us doe not in the service of the most high God; the which is a great shame and confusion.” Eng. trans., lib. 5, cap. 16.

Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 9.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, Apend.; lib. 3, cap. 4-8.—Zurita, Rapport, pp. 123-126.—Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 15, 16.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 9, cap. 11-14, 30, 31.—“They were taught,” says the good father last cited, “to eschew vice, and cleave to virtue,—according to their notions of them; namely, to abstain from wrath to offer violence and do wrong to no man,—in short, to perform the duties plainly pointed out by natural religion.”

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 8, cap. 20, 21.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—It is impossible not to be struck with the great resemblance, not merely in a few empty forms, but in the whole way of life, of the Mexican and Egyptian priesthood. Compare Herodotus (Euterpe, passim) and Diodorus (lib. 1, sec. 73, 81). The English reader may consult, for the same purpose, Heeren (Hist. Res., vol. v. chap. 2), Wilkinson (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1837), vol. i. pp. 257-279), the last writer especially,—who has contributed, more than all others, towards opening to us the interior of the social life of this interesting people.

[Humboldt has noticed the curious similarity of the word teocalli with the Greek compound—actual or possible—θεόκαλία; and Buschmann observes, “Die Ubereinstimmung des mex. teotl und θεός, arithmetisch sehr hoch anzuschlagen wegen des Doppelvocals, zeigt wie weit es der Zufall in Wortähnlichkeiten zwischen ganz verschiedenen Sprachen bringen kann.” Uber die aztekischen Ortsnamen, S. 627.—K.]

Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 307.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 13.—Gomara, Crón., cap. 80, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 4.—Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.—This last writer, who visited Mexico immediately after the Conquest, in 1521, assures us that some of the smaller temples, or pyramids, were filled with earth impregnated with odoriferous gums and gold dust; the latter sometimes in such quantities as probably to be worth a million of castellanos! (Ubi supra.) These were the temples of Mammon, indeed! But I find no confirmation of such golden reports.

[The teocallis could be used as fortresses, as the Spaniards ascertained to their sorrow.]

Cod. Tel.-Rem., Pl. 1, and Cod. Vat., passim, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vols. i., vi.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 10, et seq.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, passim.—Among the offerings, quails may be particularly noticed, for the incredible quantities of them sacrificed and consumed at many of the festivals.

The traditions of their origin have somewhat of a fabulous tinge. But, whether true or false, they are equally indicative of unparalleled ferocity in the people who could be the subject of them. Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 167, et seq.; also Humboldt (who does not appear to doubt them), Vues des Cordillères, p. 95.

[According to Payne, New World Called America, i. p. 78, Tezcatlipoca, or Fiery Mirror, was so called because of the shield of polished metal which was almost always a conspicuous adjunct of the idol which represented him. Probably the correct form of his name is Tezcatlipopoca, or Fiery Smoking Mirror. He had many names: “Night Wind,”—“whose servants we are,”—“The Impatient,”—“The Provident Disposer,”—“who does what he will.” His best-known appellation was Telpochtli, or “Youthful Warrior,” because his vital force was never diminished. He was also called the “Enemy,” and the “Hungry Chief.”—He always had a living representative; when one was sacrificed another took his place, and this representative was invested with the dress, functions, and attributes of the God himself.—M.]

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 2, 5, 24, et alibi.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 2, cap. 16.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 7, cap. 19; lib. 10, cap. 14.—Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 307.—Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 9-21.—Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.—Relacion por el Regimiento de Vera Cruz (Julio, 1519), MS.—Few readers, probably, will sympathize with the sentence of Torquemada, who concludes his tale of woe by coolly dismissing “the soul of the victim, to sleep with those of his false gods, in hell!” Lib. 10, cap. 23.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 10, 29.—Gomara, Crón., cap. 219, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 6-11.—The reader will find a tolerably exact picture of the nature of these tortures in the twenty-first canto of the “Inferno.” The fantastic creations of the Florentine poet were nearly realized, at the very time he was writing, by the barbarians of an unknown world. One sacrifice, of a less revolting character, deserves to be mentioned. The Spaniards called it the “gladiatorial sacrifice,” and it may remind one of the bloody games of antiquity. A captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms, and brought against a number of Mexicans in succession. If he defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to escape. If vanquished, he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in the usual manner. The combat was fought on a huge circular stone, before the assembled capital. Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 21.—Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 305.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 1, 4, 21, et alibi.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 10.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 76, 82.

Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 7, cap. 19.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 2, cap. 17.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 2, cap. 21, et alibi.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 2.

To say nothing of Egypt, where, notwithstanding the indications on the monuments, there is strong reason for doubting it. (Comp. Herodotus, Euterpe, sec. 45.) It was of frequent occurrence among the Greeks, as every schoolboy knows. In Rome, it was so common as to require to be interdicted by an express law, less than a hundred years before the Christian era,—a law recorded in a very honest strain of exultation by Pliny (Hist. Nat., lib. 30, sec. 3, 4); notwithstanding which, traces of the existence of the practice may be discerned to a much later period. See, among others, Horace, Epod., In Canidiam.

See Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 49.—Bishop Zumárraga, in a letter written a few years after the Conquest, states that 20,000 victims were yearly slaughtered in the capital. Torquemada turns this into 20,000 infants. (Monarch. Ind., lib. 7, cap. 21.) Herrera, following Acosta, says 20,000 victims on a specified day of the year, throughout the kingdom. (Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 2, cap. 16.) Clavigero, more cautious, infers that this number may have been sacrificed annually throughout Anahuac. (Ubi supra.) Las Casas, however, in his reply to Sepulveda’s assertion, that no one who had visited the New World put the number of yearly sacrifices at less than 20,000, declares that “this is the estimate of brigands, who wish to find an apology for their own atrocities, and that the real number was not above 50”! (Œuvres, ed. Llorente (Paris, 1822), tom. i. pp. 365, 386.) Probably the good Bishop’s arithmetic here, as in most other instances, came more from his heart than his head. With such loose and contradictory data, it is clear that any specific number is mere conjecture, undeserving the name of calculation.

I am within bounds. Torquemada states the number, most precisely, at 72,344 (Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 63); Ixtlilxochitl, with equal precision, at 80,400. (Hist. Chich., MS.) ¿Quien sabe? The latter adds that the captives massacred in the capital, in the course of that memorable year, exceeded 100,000! (Loc. cit.) One, however, has to read but a little way, to find out that the science of numbers—at least where the party was not an eyewitness—is anything but an exact science with these ancient chroniclers. The Codex Telleriano-Remensis, written some fifty years after the Conquest, reduces the amount to 20,000. (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 19; vol. vi. p. 141, Eng. note.) Even this hardly warrants the Spanish interpreter in calling king Ahuitzotl a man “of a mild and moderate disposition,” templada y benigna condicion! Ibid., vol. v. p. 49.

Gomara states the number on the authority of two soldiers, whose names he gives, who took the trouble to count the grinning horrors in one of these Golgothas, where they were so arranged as to produce the most hideous effect. The existence of these conservatories is attested by every writer of the time.

The “Anonymous Conqueror” assures us, as a fact beyond dispute, that the Devil introduced himself into the bodies of the idols, and persuaded the silly priests that his only diet was human hearts! It furnishes a very satisfactory solution, to his mind, of the frequency of sacrifices in Mexico. Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 307.

The Tezcucan priests would fain have persuaded the good king Nezahualcoyotl, on occasion of a pestilence, to appease the gods by the sacrifice of some of his own subjects, instead of his enemies; on the ground that they would not only be obtained more easily, but would be fresher victims, and more acceptable. (Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 41.) This writer mentions a cool arrangement entered into by the allied monarchs with the republic of Tlascala and her confederates. A battle-field was marked out, on which the troops of the hostile nations were to engage at stated seasons, and thus supply themselves with subjects for sacrifice. The victorious party was not to pursue his advantage by invading the other’s territory, and they were to continue, in all other respects, on the most amicable footing. (Ubi supra.) The historian, who follows in the track of the Tezcucan Chronicler, may often find occasion to shelter himself, like Ariosto, with

[Don José F. Ramirez, the distinguished Mexican scholar, has made this sentence the text for a disquisition of fifty pages or more, one object of which is to show that the existence of human sacrifices is not irreconcilable with an advance in civilization. This leads him into an argument of much length, covering a broad range of historical inquiry, and displaying much learning as well as a careful consideration of the subject. In one respect, however, he has been led into an important error by misunderstanding the drift of my remarks, where, speaking of cannibalism, I say, “It is impossible the people who practise it should make any great progress in moral or intellectual culture” (p. 100). This observation, referring solely to cannibalism, the critic cites as if applied by me to human sacrifices. Whatever force, therefore, his reasoning may have in respect to the latter, it cannot be admitted to apply to the former.

Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 307.—Among other instances is that of Chimalpopoca, third king of Mexico, who doomed himself, with a number of his lords, to this death, to wipe off an indignity offered him by a brother monarch. (Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 28.) This was the law of honor with the Aztecs.

[“The advancement of Mexico rested for support on ... a system of perpetual war, remorselessly maintained against neighboring peoples, ostensibly to procure victims for sacrifice, but really to provide animal food for consumption by the privileged class engaged in it; and the religious ritual had been so expanded as to ensure for them, by a sacred and permanent sanction, an almost continuous cannibal carnival.” Payne, New World Called America, vol. i. p. 300. Mr. Payne shows that this continuous cannibalism prevailed because Anahuac possessed no large animals capable of furnishing a regular food supply. “Organized cannibalism, fortified by its religious sanction, was in fact a natural if not a necessary outgrowth of circumstances.”—M.]

Voltaire, doubtless, intends this, when he says, “Ils n’étaient point anthropophages, comme un très-petit nombre de peuplades Américaines.” (Essai sur les Mœurs, chap. 147.)

[The remark in the text admits of some qualification. According to an ancient Tezcucan chronicler, quoted by Señor Ramirez, the Toltecs celebrated occasionally the worship of the god Tlaloc with human sacrifices. The most important of these was the offering up once a year of five or six maidens, who were immolated in the usual horrid way of tearing out their hearts. It does not appear that the Toltecs consummated the sacrifice by devouring the flesh of the victim. This seems to have been the only exception to the blameless character of the Toltec rites. Tlaloc was the oldest deity in the Aztec mythology, in which he found a suitable place. Yet, as the knowledge of him was originally derived from the Toltecs, it cannot be denied that this people, as Ramirez says, possessed in their peculiar civilization the germs of those sanguinary institutions which existed on so appalling a scale in Mexico. See Ramirez, Notas y Esclarecimientos, ubi supra.]

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 45, et alibi.

No doubt the ferocity of character engendered by their sanguinary rites greatly facilitated their conquests. Machiavelli attributes to a similar cause, in part, the military successes of the Romans. (Discorsi sopra T. Livio, lib. 2, cap. 2.) The same chapter contains some ingenious reflections—much more ingenious than candid—on the opposite tendencies of Christianity.{*}

“An Egyptian temple,” says Denon, strikingly, “is an open volume, in which the teachings of science, morality, and the arts are recorded. Every thing seems to speak one and the same language, and breathes one and the same spirit.” The passage is cited by Heeren, Hist. Res., vol. v. p. 178.

Divine Legation, ap. Works (London, 1811), vol. iv. b. 4, sec. 4.—The Bishop of Gloucester, in his comparison of the various hieroglyphical systems of the world, shows his characteristic sagacity and boldness by announcing opinions little credited then, though since established. He affirmed the existence of an Egyptian alphabet, but was not aware of the phonetic property of hieroglyphics,—the great literary discovery of our age.

It appears that the hieroglyphics on the most recent monuments of Egypt contain no larger infusion of phonetic characters than those which existed eighteen centuries before Christ; showing no advance, in this respect, for twenty-two hundred years! (See Champollion, Précis du Système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens (Paris, 1824), pp. 242, 281.) It may seem more strange that the enchorial alphabet, so much more commodious, should not have been substituted. But the Egyptians were familiar with their hieroglyphics from infancy, which, moreover, took the fancies of the most illiterate, probably in the same manner as our children are attracted and taught by the picture-alphabets in an ordinary spelling-book.

Descripcion histórica y cronológica de las Dos Piedras (México, 1832), Parte 2, p. 39.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, pp. 32, 44.—Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 7.—The continuation of Gama’s work, recently edited by Bustamante, in Mexico, contains, among other things, some interesting remarks on the Aztec hieroglyphics. The editor has rendered a good service by this further publication of the writings of this estimable scholar, who has done more than any of his countrymen to explain the mysteries of Aztec science.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, p. 32.—Warburton, with his usual penetration, rejects the idea of mystery in the figurative hieroglyphics. (Divine Legation, b. 4, sec. 4.) If there was any mystery reserved for the initiated, Champollion thinks it may have been the system of the anaglyphs. (Précis, p. 360.) Why may not this be true, likewise, of the monstrous symbolical combinations which represented the Mexican deities?

Boturini, Idea, pp. 77-83.—Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, pp. 34-43.—Heeren is not aware, or does not allow, that the Mexicans used phonetic characters of any kind. (Hist. Res., vol. v. p. 45.) They, indeed, reversed the usual order of proceeding, and, instead of adapting the hieroglyphic to the name of the object, accommodated the name of the object to the hieroglyphic. This, of course, could not admit of great extension. We find phonetic characters, however, applied in some instances to common as well as proper names.

Boturini, Idea, ubi supra.

Clavigero has given a catalogue of the Mexican historians of the sixteenth century,—some of whom are often cited in this history,—which bears honorable testimony to the literary ardor and intelligence of the native races. Stor. del Messico, tom. i., Pref.—Also, Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, passim.

M. de Humboldt’s remark, that the Aztec annals, from the close of the eleventh century, “exhibit the greatest method and astonishing minuteness” (Vues des Cordillères, p. 137), must be received with some qualification. The reader would scarcely understand from it that there are rarely more than one or two facts recorded in any year, and sometimes not one in a dozen or more. The necessary looseness and uncertainty of these historical records are made apparent by the remarks of the Spanish interpreter of the Mendoza Codex, who tells us that the natives, to whom it was submitted, were very long in coming to an agreement about the proper signification of the paintings. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 87.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, p. 30.—Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 7.—“Tenian para cada género,” says Ixtlilxochitl, “sus Escritores, unos que trataban de los Anales, poniendo por su órden las cosas que acaecian en cada un año, con dia, mes, y hora; otros tenian á su cargo las Genealogías, y descendencia de los Reyes, Señores, y Personas de linaje, asentando por cuenta y razon los que nacian, y borraban los que morian con la misma cuenta. Unos tenian cuidado de las pinturas, de los términos, límites, y mojoneras de las Ciudades, Provincias, Pueblos, y Lugares, y de las suertes, y repartimiento de las tierras cuyas eran, y á quien pertenecian; otros de los libros de Leyes, ritos, y ceremonias que usaban.” Hist. Chich., MS., Prólogo.

According to Boturini, the ancient Mexicans were acquainted with the Peruvian method of recording events by means of the quippus,—knotted strings of various colors,—which were afterwards superseded by hieroglyphical painting. (Idea, p. 86.) He could discover, however, but a single specimen, which he met with in Tlascala, and that had nearly fallen to pieces with age. McCulloh suggests that it may have been only a wampum belt, such as is common among our North American Indians. (Researches, p. 201.) The conjecture is plausible enough. Strings of wampum, of various colors, were used by the latter people for the similar purpose of registering events. The insulated fact, recorded by Boturini, is hardly sufficient—unsupported, so far as I know, by any other testimony—to establish the existence of quippus among the Aztecs, who had but little in common with the Peruvians.

Pliny, who gives a minute account of the papyrus reed of Egypt, notices the various manufactures obtained from it, as ropes, cloth, paper, etc. It also served as a thatch for the roofs of houses, and as food and drink for the natives. (Hist. Nat., lib. 11, cap. 20-22.) It is singular that the American agave, a plant so totally different, should also have been applied to all these various uses.

Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 8.—Boturini, Idea, p. 96.—Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 52.—Peter Martyr Anglerius, De Orbe Novo (Compluti, 1530), dec. 3, cap. 8; dec. 5, cap 10.—Martyr has given a minute description of the Indian maps sent home soon after the invasion of New Spain. His inquisitive mind was struck with the evidence they afforded of a positive civilization. Ribera, the friend of Cortés, brought back a story that the paintings were designed as patterns for embroiderers and jewellers. But Martyr had been in Egypt, and he felt little hesitation in placing the Indian drawings in the same class with those he had seen on the obelisks and temples of that country.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., Prólogo.—Idem, Sum. Relac., MS.—[“The name of Zumárraga,” says Señor Alaman, “has other and very different titles to immortality from that mentioned by Mr. Prescott,—titles founded on his virtues and apostolic labors, especially on the fervid zeal with which he defended the natives and the manifold benefits he secured to them. The loss that history suffered by the destruction of the Indian manuscripts by the missionaries has been in a great measure repaired by the writings of the missionaries themselves.” Conquista de Méjico (trad. de Vega), tom. i. p. 60.]—Writers are not agreed whether the conflagration took place in the square of Tlatelolco or Tezcuco. Comp. Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 188, and Bustamante’s Pref. to Ixtlilxochitl, Cruautés des Conquérans, trad. de Ternaux, p. xvii.

It has been my lot to record both these displays of human infirmity, so humbling to the pride of intellect. See the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, Part 2, chap. 6.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 10, cap. 27.—Bustamante, Mañanas de Alameda (México, 1836), tom. ii., Prólogo.

[“After the zeal of the priests had somewhat abated, or rather when the harmless nature of the paintings was better understood, the natives were permitted to use their hieroglyphics again. Among other things they wrote down in this way their sins when the priests were too busy to hear their verbal confessions.” Bancroft, Native Races, vol. ii. p. 526.—M.]

Very many of the documents thus painfully amassed in the archives of the Audience of Mexico were sold, according to Bustamante, as wrapping-paper, to apothecaries, shopkeepers, and rocket-makers! Boturini’s noble collection has not fared much better.

The history of this famous collection is familiar to scholars. It was sent to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, not long after the Conquest, by the viceroy Mendoza, Marques de Mondejar. The vessel fell into the hands of a French cruiser, and the manuscript was taken to Paris. It was afterwards bought by the chaplain of the English embassy, and, coming into the possession of the antiquary Purchas, was engraved, in extenso, by him, in the third volume of his “Pilgrimage.” After its publication, in 1625, the Aztec original lost its importance, and fell into oblivion so completely that, when at length the public curiosity was excited in regard to its fate, no trace of it could be discovered. Many were the speculations of scholars, at home and abroad, respecting it, and Dr. Robertson settled the question as to its existence in England, by declaring that there was no Mexican relic in that country, except a golden goblet of Montezuma. (History of America (London, 1796), vol. iii. p. 370.) Nevertheless, the identical Codex, and several other Mexican paintings, have been since discovered in the Bodleian Library. The circumstance has brought some obloquy on the historian, who, while prying into the collections of Vienna and the Escorial, could be so blind to those under his own eyes.

It formerly belonged to the Giustiniani family, but was so little cared for that it was suffered to fall into the mischievous hands of the domestics’ children, who made sundry attempts to burn it. Fortunately, it was painted on deerskin, and, though somewhat singed, was not destroyed. (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 89, et seq.) It is impossible to cast the eye over this brilliant assemblage of forms and colors without feeling how hopeless must be the attempt to recover a key to the Aztec mythological symbols; which are here distributed with the symmetry, indeed, but in all the endless combinations, of the kaleidoscope. It is in the third volume of Lord Kingsborough’s work.

Humboldt, who has copied some pages of it in his “Atlas pittoresque,” intimates no doubt of its Aztec origin. (Vues des Cordillères, pp. 266, 267.) M. Le Noir even reads in it an exposition of Mexican Mythology, with occasional analogies to that of Egypt and of Hindostan. (Antiquités Mexicaines, tom, ii., Introd.) The fantastic forms of hieroglyphic symbols may afford analogies for almost anything.

The history of this Codex, engraved entire in the third volume of the “Antiquities of Mexico,” goes no further back than 1739, when it was purchased at Vienna for the Dresden Library. It is made of the American agave. The figures painted on it bear little resemblance, either in feature or form, to the Mexican. They are surmounted by a sort of head-gear, which looks something like a modern peruke. On the chin of one we may notice a beard, a sign often used after the Conquest to denote a European. Many of the persons are sitting cross-legged. The profiles of the faces, and the whole contour of the limbs, are sketched with a spirit and freedom very unlike the hard, angular outlines of the Aztecs. The characters, also, are delicately traced, generally in an irregular but circular form, and are very minute. They are arranged, like the Egyptian, both horizontally and perpendicularly, mostly in the former manner, and, from the prevalent direction of the profiles, would seem to have been read from right to left. Whether phonetic or ideographic, they are of that compact and purely conventional sort which belongs to a well-digested system for the communication of thought. One cannot but regret that no trace should exist of the quarter whence this MS.

There are three of these: the Mendoza Codex; the Telleriano-Remensis,—formerly the property of Archbishop Teller,—in the Royal Library of Paris; and the Vatican MS., No. 3738. The interpretation of the last bears evident marks of its recent origin; probably as late as the close of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the ancient hieroglyphics were read with the eye of faith rather than of reason. Whoever was the commentator (comp. Vues des Cordillères, pp. 203, 204; and Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. pp. 155, 222), he has given such an exposition as shows the Aztecs to have been as orthodox Christians as any subjects of the Pope.

The total number of Egyptian hieroglyphics discovered by Champollion amounts to 864; and of these 130 only are phonetic, notwithstanding that this kind of character is used far more frequently than both the others. Précis, p. 263;—also Spineto, Lectures, Lect. 3.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., Dedic.—Boturini, who travelled through every part of the country in the middle of the last century, could not meet with an individual who could afford him the least clue to the Aztec hieroglyphics. So completely had every vestige of their ancient language been swept away from the memory of the natives. (Idea, p. 116.) If we are to believe Bustamante, however, a complete key to the whole system is, at this moment, somewhere in Spain. It was carried home, at the time of the process against Father Mier, in 1795. The name of the Mexican Champollion who discovered it is Borunda. Gama, Descripcion, tom. ii. p. 33, nota.

[After the ancient picture-writings had been destroyed in Yucatan, and their harmlessness had been recognized, attempts were made to record once more the history they contained. These restored chronicles are called the Chilan Balam. From them Professor Daniel G. Brinton selected the stories he published as the “Maya Chronicles.” One of them, the “Chronicle of Chicxulub,” was written in Roman characters by a native Maya chief, Nakuk Pech, about the year 1562. It is a short account of the Spanish conquest of Yucatan and refers to Izamal and Chichen-Itza as inhabited towns in the first half of the sixteenth century.—M.]

Teoamoxtli, “the divine book,” as it was called. According to Ixtlilxochitl, it was composed by a Tezcucan doctor, named Huematzin, towards the close of the seventeenth century. (Relaciones, MS.) It gave an account of the migrations of his nation from Asia, of the various stations on their journey, of their social and religious institutions, their science, arts, etc., etc., a good deal too much for one book. Ignotum pro mirifico. It has never been seen by a European.{} A copy is said to have been in possession of the Tezcucan chroniclers on the taking of their capital. (Bustamante, Crónica Mexicana (México, 1822), carta 3.) Lord Kingsborough, who can scent out a Hebrew root be it buried never so deep, has discovered that the Teoamoxtli was the Pentateuch. Thus, teo means “divine,” amotl, “paper” or “book,” and moxtli* “appears to be Moses;”—“Divine Book of Moses”! Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 204, nota.

[Such a supposition would require a “stretch of fancy” greater than any which the mind of the mere historical inquirer is capable of taking. To admit the probability of the Asiatic origin of the American races, and of the indefinite antiquity of Mexican civilization, is something very different from believing that this civilization, already developed in the degree required for the existence and preservation of its own records during so long a period and so great a migration, can have been transplanted from the one continent to the other. It would be easier to accept the theory, now generally abandoned, that the original settlers owed their civilization to a body of colonists from Phœnicia. In view of so hazardous a conjecture, it is difficult to understand why Buschmann has taken exception to the “sharp criticism” to which Prescott has subjected the sources of Mexican history, and his “low estimate of their value and credibility.”—K.]

Boturini, Idea, pp. 90-97.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 174-178.

“Los cantos con que las observaban Autores muy graves en su modo de ciencia y facultad, pues fuéron los mismos Reyes, y de la gente mas ilustre y entendida, que siempre observáron y adquiriéron la verdad, y esta con tanta razon, quanta pudiéron tener los mas graves y fidedignos Autores.” Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., Prologo.

See chap. 6 of this Introduction.

See some account of these mummeries in Acosta (lib. 5, cap. 30),—also Clavigero (Stor. del Messico, ubi supra). Stone models of masks are sometimes found among the Indian ruins, and engravings of them are both in Lord Kingsborough’s work and in the Antiquités Mexicaines.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, Apend. 2.—Gama, in comparing the language of Mexican notation with the decimal system of the Europeans and the ingenious binary system of Leibnitz, confounds oral with written arithmetic.

Ibid., ubi supra.—This learned Mexican has given a very satisfactory treatise on the arithmetic of the Aztecs, in his second part.

Herodotus, Euterpe, sec. 4.{*}

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, Apend.—According to Clavigero, the fairs were held on the days bearing the sign of the year. Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 62.

The people of Java, according to Sir Stamford Raffles, regulated their markets, also, by a week of five days. They had, besides, our week of seven (History of Java (London, 1830), vol. i. pp. 531, 532.) The latter division of time, of general use throughout the East, is the oldest monument existing of astronomical science. See La Place, Exposition du Système du Monde (Paris, 1808), lib. 5, chap. 1.

Veytia, Historia antigua de Méjico (Méjico, 1806), tom. i. cap. 6, 7.—Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 33, 34, et alibi.—Boturini, Idea, pp. 4, 44, et seq.—Cod. Tel.-Rem., ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 104.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 5.

Sahagun intimates doubts of this. “They celebrated another feast every four years in honor of the elements of fire, and it is probable and has been conjectured that it was on these occasions that they made their intercalation, counting six days of nemontemi,” as the unlucky complementary days were called. (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, Apend.) But this author, however good an authority for the superstitions, is an indifferent one for the science of the Mexicans.

The Persians had a cycle of one hundred and twenty years, of three hundred and sixty-five days each, at the end of which they intercalated thirty days. (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillèras, p. 177.) This was the same as thirteen after the cycle of fifty-two years of the Mexicans, but was less accurate than their probable intercalation of twelve days and a half. It is obviously indifferent, as far as accuracy is concerned, which multiple of four is selected to form the cycle; though, the shorter the interval of intercalation, the less, of course, will be the temporary departure from the true time.

This is the conclusion to which Gama arrives, after a very careful investigation of the subject. He supposes that the “bundles,” or cycles, of fifty-two years—by which, as we shall see, the Mexicans computed time—ended alternately at midnight and midday. (Descripcion, Parte 1, p. 52, et seq.) He finds some warrant for this in Acosta’s account (lib. 6, cap. 2), though contradicted by Torquemada (Monarch. Ind., lib. 5, cap. 33), and, as it appears, by Sahagun,—whose work, however, Gama never saw (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 7, cap. 9),—both of whom place the close of the year at midnight. Gama’s hypothesis derives confirmation from a circumstance I have not seen noticed. Besides the “bundle” of fifty-two years, the Mexicans had a larger cycle of one hundred and four years, called “an old age.” As this was not used in their reckonings, which were carried on by their “bundles,” it seems highly probable that it was designed to express the period which would bring round the commencement of the smaller cycles to the same hour, and in which the intercalary days, amounting to twenty-five, might be comprehended without a fraction.

This length, as computed by Zach, at 365d. 5h. 48m. 48sec., is only 2m. 9sec. longer than the Mexican; which corresponds with the celebrated calculation of the astronomers of the Caliph Almamon, that fell short about two minutes of the true time. See La Place, Exposition, p. 350.

“El corto exceso de 4hor. 38min. 40seg., que hay de mas de los 25 dias en el período de 104 años, no puede componer un dia entero, hasta que pasen mas de cinco de estos períodos máximos ó 538 años.” (Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, p. 23.) Gama estimates the solar year at 365d. 5h. 48m. 50sec.

The ancient Etruscans arranged their calendar in cycles of 110 solar years, and reckoned the year at 365d. 5h. 40m.; at least this seems probable, says Niebuhr. (History of Rome, Eng. trans. (Cambridge, 1828), vol. i. pp. 113, 238.) The early Romans had not wit enough to avail themselves of this accurate measurement, which came within nine minutes of the true time. The Julian reform, which assumed 365d. 5¼h. as the length of the year, erred as much, or rather more, on the other side. And when the Europeans, who adopted this calendar, landed in Mexico, their reckoning was nearly eleven days in advance of the exact time,—or, in other words, of the reckoning of the barbarous Aztecs;{*} a remarkable fact.—Gama’s researches led to the conclusion that the year of the new cycle began with the Aztecs on the ninth of January; a date considerably earlier than that usually assigned by the Mexican writers. (Descripcion, Parte 2, pp. 49-52.) By postponing the intercalation to the end of fifty-two years, the annual loss of six hours made every fourth year begin a day earlier.

These hieroglyphics were a “rabbit,” a “reed,” a “flint,” a “house.” They were taken as symbolical of the four elements, air, water, fire, earth, according to Veytia. (Hist. antig., tom. i. cap. 5.) It is not easy to see the connection between the terms “rabbit” and “air,” which lead the respective series.{*}

The following table of two of the four indictions of thirteen years each will make the text more clear. The first column shows the actual year of the great cycle, or “bundle.” The second, the numerical dots used in their arithmetic. The third is composed of their hieroglyphics for rabbit, reed, flint, house, in their regular order.

Among the Chinese, Japanese, Moghols, Mantchous, and other families of the Tartar race. Their series are composed of symbols of their five elements, and the twelve zodiacal signs, making a cycle of sixty years’ duration. Their several systems are exhibited, in connection with the Mexican, in the luminous pages of Humboldt (Vues des Cordillères, p. 149), who draws important consequences from the comparison, to which we shall have occasion to return hereafter.

In this calendar, the months of the tropical year were distributed into cycles of thirteen days, which, being repeated twenty times,—the number of days in a solar month,—completed the lunar, or astrological, year of 260 days; when the reckoning began again. “By the contrivance of these trecenas (terms of thirteen days) and the cycle of fifty-two years,” says Gama, “they formed a luni-solar period, most exact for astronomical purposes.” (Descripcion, Parte 1, p. 27.) He adds that these trecenas were suggested by the periods in which the moon is visible before and after conjunction. (Loc. cit.) It seems hardly possible that a people capable of constructing a calendar so accurately on the true principles of solar time should so grossly err as to suppose that in this reckoning they really “represented the daily revolutions of the moon.” “The whole Eastern world,” says the learned Niebuhr, “has followed the moon in its calendar; the free scientific division of a vast portion of time is peculiar to the West. Connected with the West is that primeval extinct world which we call the New.” History of Rome, vol. i. p. 239.

They were named “companions,” and “lords of the night,” and were supposed to preside over the night, as the other signs did over the day. Boturini, Idea, p. 57.

Thus, their astrological year was divided into months of thirteen days; there were thirteen years in their indictions, which contained each three hundred and sixty-five periods of thirteen days, etc. It is a curious fact that the number of lunar months of thirteen days contained in a cycle of fifty-two years, with the intercalation, should correspond precisely with the number of years in the great Sothic period of the Egyptians, namely, 1491; a period in which the seasons and festivals came round to the same place in the year again. The coincidence may be accidental. But a people employing periodical series and astrological calculations have generally some meaning in the numbers they select and the combinations to which they lead.

According to Gama (Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 75, 76), because 369 can be divided by nine without a fraction; the nine “companions” not being attached to the five complementary days. But 4, a mystic number much used in their arithmetical combinations, would have answered the same purpose equally well. In regard to this, McCulloh observes, with much shrewdness, “It seems impossible that the Mexicans, so careful in constructing their cycle, should abruptly terminate it with 360 revolutions, whose natural period of termination is 2340.” And he supposes the nine “companions” were used in connection with the cycles of 260 days, in order to throw them into the larger ones, of 2340; eight of which, with a ninth of 260 days, he ascertains to be equal to the great solar period of 52 years. (Researches, pp. 207, 208.) This is very plausible. But in fact the combinations of the two first series, forming the cycle of 260 days, were always interrupted at the end of the year, since each new year began with the same hieroglyphic of the days. The third series of the “companions” was intermitted, as above stated, on the five unlucky days which closed the year, in order, if we may believe Boturini, that the first day of the solar year might have annexed to it the first of the nine “companions,” which signified “lord of the year” (Idea, p.

Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, Introd.

“Dans les pays les plus différents,” says Benjamin Constant, concluding some sensible reflections on the sources of the sacerdotal power, “chez les peuples de mœurs les plus opposées, le sacerdoce a dû au culte des éléments et des astres un pouvoir dont aujourd’hui nous concevons à peine l’idée.” De la Religion (Paris, 1825), lib. 3, ch. 5.

“It is a gentle and affectionate thought. That, in immeasurable heights above us, At our first birth the wreath of love was woven With sparkling stars for flowers.” Coleridge: Translation of Wallenstein, act 2, sc. 4.

Gama has given us a complete almanac of the astrological year, with the appropriate signs and divisions, showing with what scientific skill it was adapted to its various uses. (Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 25-31, 62-76.) Sahagun has devoted a whole book to explaining the mystic import and value of these signs, with a minuteness that may enable one to cast up a scheme of nativity for himself. (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4.) It is evident he fully believed the magic wonders which he told. “It was a deceitful art,” he says, “pernicious and idolatrous, and was never contrived by human reason.” The good father was certainly no philosopher.

See, among others, the Cod. Tel.-Rem., Part 4, Pl. 22, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i.

“It can hardly be doubted,” says Lord Kingsborough, “that the Mexicans were acquainted with many scientific instruments of strange invention, as compared with our own; whether the telescope may not have been of the number is uncertain; but the thirteenth plate of M. Dupaix’s Monuments, Part Second, which represents a man holding something of a similar nature to his eye, affords reason to suppose that they knew how to improve the powers of vision.” (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 15, note.) The instrument alluded to is rudely carved on a conical rock. It is raised no higher than the neck of the person who holds it, and looks—to my thinking—as much like a musket as a telescope; though I shall not infer the use of fire-arms among the Aztecs from this circumstance. (See vol. iv. Pl. 15.) Captain Dupaix, however, in his commentary on the drawing, sees quite as much in it as his lordship. Ibid., vol. v. p. 241.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, sec. 4; Parte 2, Apend.—Besides this colossal fragment, Gama met with some others, designed, probably, for similar scientific uses, at Chapoltepec. Before he had leisure to examine them, however, they were broken up for materials to build a furnace,—a fate not unlike that which has too often befallen the monuments of ancient art in the Old World.

[For additional light upon the Mexican astronomical and calendar system and the “calendar stone,” easily accessible authors are: Bandelier, Archæological Tour, Peabody Museum Reports, ii. 572; Valentini, American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, April, 1878; Squier, Some New Discoveries respecting Dates on the Great Calendar Stone, etc.; American Journal of Science and Arts, Second Series, March, 1849; Bancroft, Native Races, ii. chap. 16 and v. p. 192; Short, North Americans of Antiquity, chap, ix.; Wilson, Prehistoric Man, i; Brasseur, Chronologie historiques des Méxicaines, in Actes de la Soc. d’Ethnographie, vol vi.; Payne, New World Called America, ii. 310 seq. Mrs. Nuttall claims that this calendar stone stood in the great market-place in Mexico, and that its purpose was to regulate the market-days.—M.]

In his second treatise on the cylindrical stone, Gama dwells more at large on its scientific construction, as a vertical sun-dial, in order to dispel the doubts of some sturdy skeptics on this point. (Descripcion, Parte 2, Apend. 1.) The civil day was distributed by the Mexicans into sixteen parts, and began, like that of most of the Asiatic nations, with sunrise. M. de Humboldt, who probably never saw Gama’s second treatise, allows only eight intervals. Vues des Cordillères, p. 128.

“Un calendrier,” exclaims the enthusiastic Carli, “qui est réglé sur la révolution annuelle du soleil, non-seulement par l’addition de cinq jours tous les ans, mais encore par la correction du bissextile, doit sans doute être regardé comme une opération déduite d’une étude réfléchie, et d’une grande combinaison. Il faut donc supposer chez ces peuples une suite d’observations astronomiques, une idée distincte de la sphère, de la déclinaison de l’écliptique, et l’usage d’un calcul concernant les jours et les heures des apparitions solaires.” Lettres Américaines, tom. i. let. 23.

La Place, who suggests the analogy, frankly admits the difficulty. Système du Monde, lib. 5, ch. 3.

M. Jomard errs in placing the new fire, with which ceremony the old cycle properly concluded, at the winter solstice. It was not till the 26th of December, if Gama is right. The cause of M. Jomard’s error is his fixing it before, instead of after, the complementary days. See his sensible letter on the Aztec calendar, in the Vues des Cordillères, p. 309.

At the actual moment of their culmination, according to both Sahagun (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, Apend.) and Torquemada (Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 33, 36). But this could not be, as that took place at midnight, in November, so late as the last secular festival, which was early in Montezuma’s reign, in 1507. (Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, p. 50, nota.—Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, pp. 181, 182.) The longer we postpone the beginning of the new cycle, the greater must be the discrepancy.

“On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid; On his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums, Laid ready to receive the sacred spark, And blaze, to herald the ascending Sun, Upon his living altar.” Southey’s Madoc, part 2, canto 26.

I borrow the words of the summons by which the people were called to the ludi seculares, the secular games of ancient Rome, “quos nec spectsset quisquam, nec spectaturus esset.” (Suetonius, Vita Tib. Claudii, lib. 5.) The old Mexican chroniclers warm into something like eloquence in their descriptions of the Aztec festival. (Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 33.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 5.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 7, cap. 9-12. See, also, Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 52-54,—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 84-86.) The English reader will find a more brilliant coloring of the same scene in the canto of Madoc above cited,—“On the Close of the Century.”

E.g., gunpowder and the compass.—M.

This latter grain, according to Humboldt, was found by the Europeans in the New World, from the South of Chili to Pennsylvania (Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 408); he might have added, to the St. Lawrence. Our Puritan fathers found it in abundance on the New England coast, wherever they landed. See Morton, New England’s Memorial (Boston, 1826), p. 68.—Gookin, Massachusetts Historical Collections, chap. 3.

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 31.—“Admirable example for our times,” exclaims the good father, “when women are not only unfit for the labors of the field, but have too much levity to attend to their own household!”

A striking contrast also to the Egyptians, with whom some antiquaries are disposed to identify the ancient Mexicans. Sophocles notices the effeminacy of the men in Egypt, who stayed at home tending the loom, while their wives were employed in severe labors out of doors:

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 32.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 153-155.—“Jamas padeciéron hambre,” says the former writer, “sino en pocas ocasiones.” If these famines were rare, they were very distressing, however, and lasted very long. Comp. Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 41, 71, et alibi.

Oviedo considers the musa an imported plant; and Hernandez, in his copious catalogue, makes no mention of it at all. But Humboldt, who has given much attention to it, concludes that, if some species were brought into the country, others were indigenous. (Essai politique, tom. ii. pp. 382-388.) If we may credit Clavigero, the banana was the forbidden fruit that tempted our poor mother Eve! Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 49, nota.

Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 306.—Hernandez, De Histori Plantarum Novæ Hispaniæ (Matriti, 1790), lib. 6, cap. 87.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 13, et alibi.

The farmer’s preparation for his crop of Indian corn was of the simplest. He simply cut away the dense growth from his corn-field and burned it. The ashes thus secured were the only fertilizer used. Just before the first rain in May or June he made holes with a sharpened stick, and at regular intervals, in the prepared ground, and into them dropped four or five grains of corn. In the later days of the Aztec domination considerable care was taken of the growing crops. They were kept free from weeds and in some cases irrigated. Boys stationed on elevated platforms or trees frightened away the birds.—M.

Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.—He extols the honey of the maize, as equal to that of bees. (Also Oviedo, Hist. natural de las Indias, cap. 4, ap. Barcia, tom. i.) Hernandez, who celebrates the manifold ways in which the maize was prepared, derives it from the Haytian word mahiz. Hist. Plantarum, lib. 6, cap. 44, 45.

And is still, in one spot at least, San Ángel,—three leagues from the capital. Another mill was to have been established, a few years since, in Puebla. Whether this has actually been done, I am ignorant. See the Report of the Committee on Agriculture to the Senate of the United States, March 12, 1838.

Before the Revolution, the duties on the pulque formed so important a branch of revenue that the cities of Mexico, Puebla, and Toluca alone paid $817,739 to government. (Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 47.) It requires time to reconcile Europeans to the peculiar flavor of this liquor, on the merits of which they are consequently much divided. There is but one opinion among the natives. The English reader will find a good account of its manufacture in Ward’s Mexico, vol. ii. pp. 55-60.

[Ober (Travels in Mexico) gives a very full account of the uses to which the maguey is put. On the maguey plantations the plants have an average value of five dollars. “A long train departs every day from the stations on the plains of Apam, loaded exclusively with pulque, from the carriage of which the railroad derives a revenue of above $1000 a day,” p. 345. The pulque “tastes like stale buttermilk and has an odor at times like that of putrid meat.” It is wholesome and refreshing. Mexicans ascribe to it the same beneficent properties which Scotsmen assign to their whiskey.—M.]

Hernandez enumerates the several species of the maguey, which are turned to these manifold uses, in his learned work, De Hist. Plantarum. (Lib. 7, cap. 71, et seq.) M. de Humboldt considers them all varieties of the agave Americana, familiar in the southern parts both of the United States and Europe. (Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 487, et seq.) This opinion has brought on him a rather sour rebuke from our countryman the late Dr. Perrine, who pronounces them a distinct species from the American agave, and regards one of the kinds, the pita, from which the fine thread is obtained, as a totally distinct genus. (See the Report of the Committee on Agriculture.) Yet the Baron may find authority for all the properties ascribed by him to the maguey, in the most accredited writers who have resided more or less time in Mexico. See, among others, Hernandez, ubi supra.—Sahagun, Hist, de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 2; lib. 11, cap. 7.—Toribio, Hist, de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 19.—Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS. The last, speaking of the maguey, which produces the fermented drink, says expressly, “With what remain of these leaves they manufacture excellent and very fine cloth, resembling holland, or the finest linen.” It cannot be denied, however, that Dr.

The first regular establishment of this kind, according to Carli, was at Padua, in 1545. Lettres Américaines, tom. i. chap. 21.

[Though I have conformed to the views of Humboldt in regard to the knowledge of mining possessed by the ancient Mexicans, Señor Ramirez thinks the conclusions to which I have been led are not warranted by the ancient writers. From the language of Bernal Diaz and of Sahagun, in particular, he infers that their only means of obtaining the precious metals was by gathering such detached masses as were found on the surface of the ground or in the beds of the rivers. The small amount of silver in their possession he regards as an additional proof of their ignorance of the proper method and their want of the requisite tools for extracting it from the earth. See Ramirez, Notas y Esclarecimientos, p. 73.]

P. Martyr, De Orbe Novo, Decades (Compluti, 1530), dec. 5, p. 191.—Acosta, lib. 4, cap. 3.—Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. iii. pp. 114-125.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 34.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, pp. 25-29.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., ubi supra.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 15-17.—Boturini, Idea, p. 77.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., loc. cit.—Herrera, who says they could also enamel, commends the skill of the Mexican goldsmiths in making birds and animals with movable wings and limbs, in a most curious fashion. (Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 15.) Sir John Maundeville, as usual,

Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 11.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 34.—Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, pp. 27, 28.

“Parece, que permitia Dios, que la figura de sus cuerpos se asimilase á la que tenian sus almas por el pecado, en que siempre permanecian.” Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 34.

Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 195.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, p. 1. Besides the plaza mayor, Gama points out the Square of Tlatelolco, as a great cemetery of ancient relics. It was the quarter to which the Mexicans retreated, on the siege of the capital.

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 34.—Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, pp. 81-83.—These statues are repeatedly noticed by the old writers. The last was destroyed in 1754, when it was seen by Gama, who highly commends the execution of it. Ibid.

This wantonness of destruction provokes the bitter animadversion of Martyr, whose enlightened mind respected the vestiges of civilization wherever found. “The conquerors,” he says, “seldom repaired the buildings that were defaced. They would rather sack twenty stately cities than erect one good edifice.” De Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 10.

Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 110-114.—Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 40.—Ten thousand men were employed in the transportation of this enormous mass, according to Tezozomoc, whose narrative, with all the accompanying prodigies, is minutely transcribed by Bustamante. The Licentiate shows an appetite for the marvellous which might excite the envy of a monk of the Middle Ages. (See Descripcion, nota, loc. cit.) The English traveller Latrobe accommodates the wonders of nature and art very well to each other, by suggesting that these great masses of stone were transported by means of the mastodon, whose remains are occasionally disinterred in the Mexican Valley. Rambler in Mexico, p. 145.

[In 1875 Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon, having successfully interpreted certain hieroglyphic inscriptions at Chichen Itza, unearthed, at a distance of four hundred yards from the palace at that place, a statue of Chaac Mol, or Balam (the tiger king), the greatest of the Itza rulers. It was seized by the Mexican officials and sent to the city of Mexico. There, in the courtyard of the National Museum, it may be seen to-day, just opposite its exact duplicate, which was found buried, either in the plaza of Mexico or somewhere in Tlaxcala, some years ago. The story of the discovery seems marvellous in the extreme, but photographs taken at many stages of the exhumation dispel doubt as to its truth. For a very full report upon the whole matter, see the paper by Stephen Salisbury, president of the American Antiquarian Society, in the Proceedings of that society for 1877-78, pp. 70-119.—M.]

A great collection of ancient pottery, with various other specimens of Aztec art, the gift of Messrs. Poinsett and Keating, is deposited in the Cabinet of the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia. See the Catalogue, ap. Transactions, vol. iii. p. 510. Another admirable collection may be seen in the Museum of Natural History in New York.—M.

Hernandez, Hist. Plantarum, lib. 6, cap. 116.

Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 15.—Boturini, Idea, p. 77.—It is doubtful how far they were acquainted with the manufacture of silk. Carli supposes that what Cortés calls silk was only the fine texture of hair, or down, mentioned in the text. (Lettres Américaines, tom. i. let. 21.) But it is certain they had a species of caterpillar, unlike our silkworm, indeed, which spun a thread that was sold in the markets of ancient Mexico. See the Essai politique (tom. iii. pp. 66-69), where M. de Humboldt has collected some interesting facts in regard to the culture of silk by the Aztecs. Still, that the fabric should be a matter of uncertainty at all shows that it could not have reached any great excellence or extent.

Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.—Acosta, lib. 4, cap. 37.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 18-21.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 15.—Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 306.—Count Carli is in raptures with a specimen of feather-painting which he saw in Strasbourg. “Never did I behold anything so exquisite,” he says, “for brilliancy and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. No European artist could have made such a thing.” (Lettres Américaines, let. 21, note.) There is still one place, Patzquaro, where, according to Bustamante, they preserve some knowledge of this interesting art, though it is practised on a very limited scale and at great cost. Sahagun, ubi supra, nota.

“O felicem monetam, quæ suavem utilemque præbet humano generi potum, et a tartare peste avaritiæ suos immunes servat possessores, quod suffodi aut diu servari nequeat!” De Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 4.—(See, also, Carta de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 100, et seq.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 36.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 8.—Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.) The substitute for money throughout the Chinese empire was equally simple in Marco Polo’s time, consisting of bits of stamped paper, made from the inner bark of the mulberry-tree. See Viaggi di Messer Marco Polo, gentil’ huomo Venetiano, lib. 2, cap. 18, ap. Ramusio, tom. ii.

“Procurad de saber algun oficio honroso, como es el hacer obras de pluma y otros oficios mecánicos.... Mirad que tengais cuidado de lo tocante á la agricultura.... En ninguna parte he visto que alguno se mantenga por su nobleza.” Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 17.

Col. de Mendoza, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 71; vol. vi. p. 86.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 41.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 4, 10-14.

Ibid., lib. 9, cap. 2.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 2, 4.—In the Mendoza Codex is a painting representing the execution of a cacique and his family, with the destruction of his city, for maltreating the persons of some Aztec merchants. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 67.

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 41.—Ixtlilxochitl gives a curious story of one of the royal family of Tezcuco, who offered, with two other merchants, otros mercaderes, to visit the court of a hostile cacique and bring him dead or alive to the capital. They availed themselves of a drunken revel, at which they were to have been sacrificed, to effect their object. Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 62.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 2, 5.—The ninth book is taken up with an account of the merchants, their pilgrimages, the religious rites on their departure, and the sumptuous way of living on their return. The whole presents a very remarkable picture, showing they enjoyed a consideration, among the half-civilized nations of Anahuac, to which there is no parallel, unless it be that possessed by the merchant-princes of an Italian republic, or the princely merchants of our own.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 23-37.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—These complimentary attentions were paid at stated seasons, even during pregnancy. The details are given with abundant gravity and minuteness by Sahagun, who descends to particulars which his Mexican editor, Bustamante, has excluded, as somewhat too unreserved for the public eye. If they were more so than some of the editor’s own notes, they must have been very communicative indeed.

Zurita, Rapport, pp. 112-134.—The Third Part of the Col. de Mendoza (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i.) exhibits the various ingenious punishments devised for the refractory child. The flowery path of knowledge was well strewed with thorns for the Mexican tyro.

Zurita, Rapport, pp. 151-160.—Sahagun has given us the admonitions of both father and mother to the Aztec maiden on her coming to years of discretion. What can be more tender than the beginning of the mother’s exhortation? “Hija mia muy amada, muy querida palomita: ya has oido y notado las palabras que tu señor padre te ha dicho; ellas son palabras preciosas, y que raramente se dicen ni se oyen, las quales han procedido de las entrañas y corazon en que estaban atesoradas; y tu muy amado padre bien sabe que eres su hija, engendrada de él, eres su sangre y su carne, y sabe Dios nuestro señor que es así; aunque eres muger, é imágen de tu padre ¿que mas te puedo decir, hija mia, de lo que ya esta dicho? “ (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 19.) The reader will find this interesting document, which enjoins so much of what is deemed most essential among civilized nations, translated entire in the Appendix, Part 2, No. 1.

Yet we find the remarkable declaration, in the counsels of a father to his son, that, for the multiplication of the species, God ordained one man only for one woman. “Nota, hijo mio, lo que te digo, mira que el mundo ya tiene este estilo de engendrar y multiplicar, y para esta generacion y multiplicacion, ordenó Dios que una muger usase de un varon, y un varon de una muger.” Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 21.

Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 21-23; lib. 8, cap. 23.—Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 305.—Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.

As old as the heroic age of Greece, at least. We may fancy ourselves at the table of Penelope, where water in golden ewers was poured into silver basins for the accommodation of her guests, before beginning the repast:

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 22.—Amidst some excellent advice of a parent to his son, on his general deportment, we find the latter punctiliously enjoined not to take his seat at the board till he has washed his face and hands, and not to leave it till he has repeated the same thing, and cleansed his teeth. The directions are given with a precision worthy of an Asiatic. “Al principio de la comida labarte has las manos y la boca, y donde te juntares con otros á comer, no te sientes luego; mas antes tomarás el agua y la jícara para que se laben los otros, y echarles has agua á las manos, y despues de esto, cojerás lo que se ha caido por el suelo y barrerás el lugar de la comida, y también despues de comer lavarás te las manos y la boca, y limpiarás los dientes.” Ibid., loc. cit.

Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 306.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, cap. 37.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 23.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 227.—The Aztecs used to smoke after dinner, to prepare for the siesta, in which they indulged themselves as regularly as an old Castilian.—Tobacco, in Mexican yetl, is derived from a Haytian word, tabaco. The natives of Hispaniola, being the first with whom the Spaniards had much intercourse, have supplied Europe with the names of several important plants.—Tobacco, in some form or other, was used by almost all the tribes of the American continent, from the Northwest Coast to Patagonia. (See McCulloh, Researches, pp. 91-94.) Its manifold virtues, both social and medicinal, are profusely panegyrized by Hernandez, in his Hist. Plantarum, lib. 2, cap. 109.

This noble bird was introduced into Europe from Mexico. The Spaniards called it gallopavo, from its resemblance to the peacock. See Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio (tom. iii. fol. 306); also Oviedo (Rel. Sumaria, cap. 38), the earliest naturalist who gives an account of the bird, which he saw soon after the Conquest, in the West Indies, whither it had been brought, as he says, from New Spain. The Europeans, however, soon lost sight of its origin, and the name “turkey” intimated the popular belief of its Eastern origin. Several eminent writers have maintained its Asiatic or African descent; but they could not impose on the sagacious and better-instructed Buffon. (See Histoire naturelle, art. Dindon.) The Spaniards saw immense numbers of turkeys in the domesticated state, on their arrival in Mexico, where they were more common than any other poultry. They were found wild, not only in New Spain, but all along the continent, in the less frequented places, from the Northwestern territory of the United States to Panamá. The wild turkey is larger, more beautiful, and every way an incomparably finer bird than the tame. Franklin, with some point, as well as pleasantry, insists on its preference to the bald eagle as the national emblem. (See his Works, vol. x. p.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, cap. 37; lib. 8, cap. 13; lib. 9, cap. 10-14.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 23.—Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. ii. fol. 306.—Father Sahagun has gone into many particulars of the Aztec cuisine, and the mode of preparing sundry savory messes, making, all together, no despicable contribution to the noble science of gastronomy.

The froth, delicately flavored with spices and some other ingredients, was taken cold by itself. It had the consistency almost of a solid; and the “Anonymous Conqueror” is very careful to inculcate the importance of “opening the mouth wide, in order to facilitate deglutition, that the foam may dissolve gradually, and descend imperceptibly, as it were, into the stomach.” It was so nutritious that a single cup of it was enough to sustain a man through the longest day’s march. (Fol. 306.) The old soldier discusses the beverage con amore.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, cap. 37; lib. 8, cap. 13.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 23.—Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 306.

Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 8.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 14, cap. 11.—The Mexican nobles entertained minstrels in their houses, who composed ballads suited to the times, or the achievements of their lord, which they chanted, to the accompaniment of instruments, at the festivals and dances. Indeed, there was more or less dancing at most of the festivals, and it was performed in the court-yards of the houses, or in the open squares of the city. (Ibid., ubi supra.) The principal men had, also, buffoons and jugglers in their service, who amused them and astonished the Spaniards by their feats of dexterity and strength (Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 28; also Clavigero (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 179-186), who has designed several representations of their exploits, truly surprising). It is natural that a people of limited refinement should find their enjoyment in material rather than intellectual pleasures, and, consequently, should excel in them. The Asiatic nations, as the Hindoos and Chinese, for example, surpass the more polished Europeans in displays of agility and legerdemain.

“Y de esta manera pasaban gran rato de la noche, y se despedian, é iban á sus casas, unos alabando la fiesta, y otros murmurando de las demasías y excesos, cosa mui ordinaria en los que á semejantes actos se juntan.” Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 23.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 10-14.

For a criticism on this writer, see the Postscript to this chapter.

See Chapter I. of this Introduction, p. 17.

Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, MS., No. 9.—Idem, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 19.

The adventures of the former hero are told with his usual spirit by Sismondi (Républiques Italiennes, chap. 79). It is hardly necessary, for the latter, to refer the English reader to Chambers’s “History of the Rebellion of 1745;” a work which proves how thin is the partition in human life which divides romance from reality.

Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, MS., No. 10.

Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, MS., No. 10.—Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 20-24.

Idem, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 25. The contrivance was effected by means of an extraordinary personal resemblance of the parties; a fruitful source of comic—as every reader of the drama knows—though rarely of tragic interest.

It was customary, on entering the presence of a great lord, to throw aromatics into the censer. “Hecho en el brasero incienso y copal, que era uso y costumbre donde estaban los Reyes y Señores, cada vez que los criados entraban con mucha reverencia y acatamiento echaban sahumerio en el brasero; y así coneste perfume se obscurecia algo la sala.” Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, MS., No. 11.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 26.—Relaciones, MS., No. 11.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 47.

“Nezahualcoiotzin le dixo, que si viese á quien buscaban, si lo iría á denunciar? respondió, que no; tornándole á replicar diciéndole, que haria mui mal en perder una muger hermosa y lo demas que el rey Maxtla prometia, el mancebo se rió de todo, no haciendo caso ni de lo uno ni de lo otro.” Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 27.

Ibid., MS., cap. 26, 27.—Relaciones, MS., No. 11.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 47, 48.

Ixtlilxochitl, MSS., ubi supra.—Veytia, ubi supra.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 28-31.—Relaciones, MS., No. 11.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 2, cap. 51-54.

See page 21 of this volume.

“Que venganza no es justo la procuren los Reyes, sino castigar al que lo mereciere.” MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.

See Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 247.—Nezahualcoyotl’s code consisted of eighty laws, of which thirty-four only have come down to us, according to Veytia. (Hist. antig., tom. iii. p. 224, nota.) Ixtlilxochitl enumerates several of them. Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 38, and Relaciones, MS., Ordenanzas.

Nowhere are these principles kept more steadily in view than in the various writings of our adopted countryman Dr. Lieber, having more or less to do with the theory of legislation. Such works could not have been produced before the nineteenth century.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 3, cap. 7.—According to Zurita, the principal judges, at their general meetings every four months, constituted also a sort of parliament or córtes, for advising the king on matters of state. See his Rapport, p. 106; also ante, p. 33.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 137.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 3, cap. 7.—“Concurrian á este consejo las tres cabezas del imperio, en ciertos dias, á oir cantar las poesías históricas antiguas y modernas, para instruirse de toda su historia, y tambien cuando habia algun nuevo invento en cualquiera facultad, para examinarlo, aprobarlo, ó reprobarlo. Delante de las sillas de los reyes habia una gran mesa cargada de joyas de oro y plata, pedrería, plumas, y otras cosas estimables, y en los rincones de la sala muchas de mantas de todas calidades, para premios de las habilidades y estímulo de los profesores, las cuales alhajas repartian los reyes, en los dias que concurrian, á los que se aventajaban en el ejercicio ne sus facultades.” Ibid.

Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 3, cap. 7.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 247.—The latter author enumerates four historians, some of much repute, of the royal house of Tezcuco, descendants of the great Nezahualcoyotl. See his Account of Writers, tom. i. pp. 6-21.

“En la ciudad de Tezcuco estaban los Archivos Reales de todas las cosas referidas, por haver sido la Metrópoli de todas las ciencias, usos, y buenas costumbres, porque los Reyes que fuéron de ella se preciáron de esto.” (Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., Prólogo.) It was from the poor wreck of these documents, once so carefully preserved by his ancestors, that the historian gleaned the materials, as he informs us, for his own works.

“Aunque es tenida la lengua Mejicana por materna, y la Tezcucana por mas cortesana y pulida.” (Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.) “Tezcuco,” says Boturini, “where the noblemen sent their sons to acquire the most polished dialect of the Nahuatlac language, and to study poetry, moral philosophy, the heathen theology, astronomy, medicine, and history.” Idea, p. 142.

“He composed sixty songs,” says the author last quoted, “which have probably perished by the incendiary hands of the ignorant.” (Idea, p. 79.) Boturini had translations of two of these in his museum (Catálogo, p. 8), and another has since come to light.

Difficult as the task may be, it has been executed by the hand of a fair friend, who, while she has adhered to the Castilian with singular fidelity, has shown a grace and flexibility in her poetical movements which the Castilian version, and probably the Mexican original, cannot boast. See both translations in Appendix, 2, No. 2.

Numerous specimens of this may be found in Condé’s “Dominacion de los Árabes en España.” None of them are superior to the plaintive strains of the royal Abderahman on the solitary palmtree which reminded him of the pleasant land of his birth. See Parte 2, cap. 9.

“Io tocaré cantando El músico instrumento sonoroso, Tú de flores gozando Danza, y festeja á Dios que es poderoso; O gozemos de esta gloria, Porque la humana vida es transitoria.” MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.

Some of the provinces and places thus conquered were held by the allied powers in common; Tlacopan, however, only receiving one-fifth of the tribute. It was more usual to annex the vanquished territory to that one of the two great states to which it lay nearest. See Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 38.—Zurita, Rapport, p. 11.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 41. The same writer, in another work, calls the population of Tezcuco, at this period, double of what it was at the Conquest; founding his estimate on the royal registers, and on the numerous remains of edifices still visible in his day, in places now depopulated. “Parece en las historias que en este tiempo, antes que se destruyesen, havia doblado mas gente de la que halló al tiempo que vino Cortés, y los demas Españoles: porque yo hallo en los padrones reales, que el menor pueblo tenía 1100 vecinos, y de allí para arriba, y ahora no tienen 200 vecinos, y aun en algunas partes de todo punto se han acabado.... Como se hecha de ver en las ruinas, hasta los mas altos montes y sierras tenian sus sementeras, y casas principales para vivir y morar.” Relaciones, MS., No. 9.

Torquemada has extracted the particulars of the yearly expenditure of the palace from the royal account-book, which came into the historian’s possession. The following are some of the items, namely: 4,900,300 fanegas of maize (the fanega is equal to about one hundred pounds); 2,744,000 fanegas of cacao; 8000 turkeys; 1300 baskets of salt; besides an incredible quantity of game of every kind, vegetables, condiments, etc. (Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 53.) See, also, Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 35.

There were more than four hundred of these lordly residences: “Así mismo hizo edificar muchas casas y palacios para los señores y cavalleros, que asistian en su corte, cada uno conforme á la calidad y méritos de su persona, las quales llegáron á ser mas de quatrocientas tasas de señores y cavalleros de solar conocido.” Ibid., cap. 38.

Bancroft, Native Races, vol. ii. p. 162, points out a mistake in translation here, Prescott having made the estado the same measure as the vara. The wall was three times a man’s stature for one half its circumference and five times a man’s stature for the other half.—M.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36. “Esta plaza cercada de portales, y tenia así mismo por la parte del poniente otra sala grande, y muchos quartos á la redonda, que era la universidad, en donde asistian todos los poetas, históricos, y philósophos del reyno, divididos en sus claves, y academias, conforme era la facultad de cada uno, y así mismo estaban aquí los archivos reales.”

The reader who is familiar with the history of the Moors in Spain must inevitably be reminded of the palace in Cordova when he peruses these pages.—M.

This celebrated naturalist was sent by Philip II to New Spain, and he employed several years in compiling a voluminous work on its various natural productions, with drawings illustrating them. Although the government is said to have expended sixty thousand ducats in effecting this great object, the volumes were not published till long after the author’s death. In 1651 a mutilated edition of the part of the work relating to medical botany appeared at Rome.—The original MSS. were supposed to have been destroyed by the great fire in the Escorial, not many years after. Fortunately, another copy, in the author’s own hand, was detected by the indefatigable Muñoz, in the library of the Jesuits’ College at Madrid, in the latter part of the last century; and a beautiful edition, from the famous press of Ibarra, was published in that capital, under the patronage of government, in 1790. (Hist. Plantarum, Præfatio.—Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Nova (Matriti, 1790), tom. iii. p. 432.) The work of Hernandez is a monument of industry and erudition, the more remarkable as being the first on this difficult subject. And, after all the additional light from the labors of later naturalists, it still holds its place as a book of the highest authority, for the perspicuity, fidelity, and thoroughness with which the multifarious topics in it are discussed.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.

“Some of the terraces on which it stood,” says Mr. Bullock, speaking of this palace, “are still entire, and covered with cement, very hard, and equal in beauty to that found in ancient Roman buildings.... The great church, which stands close by, is almost entirely built of the materials taken from the palace, many of the sculptured stones from which may be seen in the walls, though most of the ornaments are turned inwards. Indeed, our guide informed us that whoever built a house at Tezcuco made the ruins of the palace serve as his quarry.” (Six Months in Mexico, chap. 26.) Torquemada notices the appropriation of the materials to the same purpose. Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 45.

Ixtlilxochitl, MS., ubi supra.

Thus, to punish the Chalcas for their rebellion, the whole population were compelled, women as well as men, says the chronicler so often quoted, to labor on the royal edifices for four years together; and large granaries were provided with stores for their maintenance in the mean time. Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 46.

If the people in general were not much addicted to polygamy, the sovereign, it must be confessed,—and it was the same, we shall see, in Mexico,—made ample amends for any self-denial on the part of his subjects.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 37.

The Egyptian priests managed the affair in a more courtly style, and, while they prayed that all sorts of kingly virtues might descend on the prince, they threw the blame of actual delinquencies on his ministers; thus, “not by the bitterness of reproof,” says Diodorus, “but by the allurements of praise, enticing him to an honest way of life.” Lib. 1, cap. 70.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 42.—See Appendix, Part 2, No. 3, for the original description of this royal residence.

“Quinientos y veynte escalones.” Davilla Padilla, Historia de la Provincia de Santiago (Madrid, 1596), lib. 2, cap. 81.—This writer, who lived in the sixteenth century, counted the steps himself. Those which were not cut in the rock were crumbling into ruins, as, indeed, every part of the establishment was even then far gone to decay.

On the summit of the mount, according to Padilla, stood an image of a coyotl,—an animal resembling a fox,—which, according to tradition, represented an Indian famous for his fasts. It was destroyed by that stanch iconoclast, Bishop Zumárraga, as a relic of idolatry. (Hist. de Santiago, lib. 2, cap. 81.) This figure was, no doubt, the emblem of Nezahualcoyotl himself, whose name, as elsewhere noticed, signified “hungry fox.”{*}

[Bancroft, Native Races, ii. p. 171, says these figures were not statues but were all cut on the face of the rock border.—M.]

“Hecho de una peña un leon de mas de dos brazas de largo con sus alas y plumas: estaba hechado y mirando á la parte del oriente, en cuia boca asomaba un rostro, que era el mismo retrato del Rey.” Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 42.

Bullock speaks of a beautiful basin, twelve feet long by eight wide, having a well five feet by four deep in the centre, etc., etc. Whether truth lies in the bottom of this well is not so clear. Latrobe describes the baths as “two singular basins, perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, not large enough for any monarch bigger than Oberon to take a duck in.” (Comp. Six Months in Mexico, chap. 26; and Rambler in Mexico, Let. 7.) Ward speaks much to the same purpose (Mexico in 1827 (London, 1828), vol. ii. p. 296), which agrees with verbal accounts I have received of the same spot.{*}

“Gradas hechas de la misma peña tan bien gravadas y lizas que parecian espejos.” (Ixtlilxochitl, MS., ubi supra.) The travellers just cited notice the beautiful polish still visible in the porphyry.

Padilla saw entire pieces of cedar among the ruins, ninety feet long and four in diameter. Some of the massive portals, he observed, were made of a single stone. (Hist. de Santiago, lib. 11, cap. 81.) Peter Martyr notices an enormous wooden beam, used in the construction of the palaces of Tezcuco, which was one hundred and twenty feet long by eight feet in diameter! The accounts of this and similar huge pieces of timber were so astonishing, he adds, that he could not have received them except on the most unexceptionable testimony. De Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 10.{*}

It is much to be regretted that the Mexican government should not take a deeper interest in the Indian antiquities. What might not be effected by a few hands drawn from the idle garrisons of some of the neighboring towns and employed in excavating this ground, “the Mount Palatine” of Mexico! But, unhappily, the age of violence has been succeeded by one of apathy.

“They are doubtless,” says Mr. Latrobe, speaking of what he calls “these inexplicable ruins,” “rather of Toltec than Aztec origin, and, perhaps, with still more probability, attributable to a people of an age yet more remote.” (Rambler in Mexico, Let. 7.) “I am of opinion,” says Mr. Bullock, “that these were antiquities prior to the discovery of America, and erected by a people whose history was lost even before the building of the city of Mexico.—Who can solve this difficulty?” (Six Months in Mexico, ubi supra.) The reader who takes Ixtlilxochitl for his guide will have no great trouble in solving it. He will find here, as he might, probably, in some other instances, that one need go little higher than the Conquest for the origin of antiquities which claim to be coeval with Phœnicia and ancient Egypt.

Zurita, Rapport, p. 12.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 43.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 43.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 43.

“En traje de cazador (que lo acostumbraba á hacer muy de ordinario), saliendo á solas, y disfrazado para que no fuese conocido, á reconocer las faltas y necesidad que havia en la república para remediarlas.” Idem, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 46.

“Un hombresillo miserable, pues quita á los hombres lo que Dios á manos llenas les da.” Ixtlilxochitl, loc. cit.

Ibid., cap. 46.

“Porque las paredes oian.” (Ixtlilxochitl, loc. cit.) A European proverb among the American aborigines looks too strange not to make one suspect the hand of the chronicler.

“Le dijo, que con aquello poco le bastaba, y viviria bien aventurado; y él, con toda la máquina que le parecia que tenia arto, no tenia nada; y así lo despidió.” Ixtlilxochitl, loc. cit.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 46.

“Verdaderamente los Dioses que io adoro, que son ídolos de piedra que no hablan, ni sienten, no pudiéron hacer ni formar la hermosura del cielo, el sol, luna, y estrellas que lo hermosean, y dan luz á la tierra, rios, aguas y fuentes, árboles, y plantas que la hermosean, las gentes que la poseen, y todo lo criado; algun Dios muy poderoso, oculto, y no conocido es el Criador de todo el universo. El solo es él que puede consolarme en mi afliccion, y socorrerme en tan grande angustia como mi corazon siente.” MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.

MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.—The manuscript here quoted is one of the many left by the author on the antiquities of his country, and forms part of a voluminous compilation made in Mexico by Father Vega, in 1792, by order of the Spanish government. See Appendix, Part 2, No. 2.

“Al Dios no conocido, causa de las causas.” MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.

Their earliest temples were dedicated to the sun. The moon they worshipped as his wife, and the stars as his sisters. (Veytia, Hist. antig., tom. i. cap. 25.) The ruins still existing at Teotihuacan, about seven leagues from Mexico, are supposed to have been temples raised by this ancient people in honor of the two great deities. Boturini, Idea, p. 42.

MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.—“This was evidently a gong,” says Mr. Ranking, who treads with enviable confidence over the “suppositos cineres” in the path of the antiquary. See his Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, etc., by the Mongols (London, 1827), p. 310.

“Toda la redondez de la tierra es un sepulcro: no hay cosa que sustente que con título de piedad no la esconda y entierre. Corren los rios, los arroyos, las fuentes, y las aguas, y ningunas retroceden para sus alegres nacimientos: aceléranse con ansia para los vastos dominios de Tlulóca [Neptuno], y cuanto mas se arriman á sus dilatadas márgenes, tanto mas van labrando las melancólicas urnas para sepultarse. Lo que fué ayer no es hoy, ni lo de hoy se afianza que será mañana.”

“Aspiremos al cielo, que allí todo es eterno y nada se corrompe.”

“El horror del sepulcro es lisongera cuna para él, y las funestas sombras, brillantes luces para los astros.”—The original text and a Spanish translation of this poem first appeared, I believe, in a work of Grenados y Galvez. (Tardes Americanas (México, 1778), p. 90, et seq.) The original is in the Otomi tongue, and both, together with a French version, have been inserted by M. Ternaux-Compans in the Appendix to his translation of Ixtlilxochitl’s Hist. des Chichimèques (tom. i. pp. 359-367). Bustamante, who has, also, published the Spanish version in his Galería de antiguos Príncipes Mejicanos (Puebla, 1821, pp. 16, 17), calls it the “Ode of the Flower,” which was recited at a banquet of the great Tezcucan nobles. If this last, however, be the same mentioned by Torquemada (Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 45), it must have been written in the Tezcucan tongue; and, indeed, it is not probable that the Otomi, an Indian dialect, so distinct from the languages of Anahuac, however well understood by the royal poet, could have been comprehended by a miscellaneous audience of his countrymen.

An approximation to a date is the most one can hope to arrive at with Ixtlilxochitl, who has entangled his chronology in a manner beyond my skill to unravel. Thus, after telling us that Nezahualcoyotl was fifteen years old when his father was slain in 1418, he says he died at the age of seventy-one, in 1462. Instar omnium. Comp. Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 18, 19, 49.

MS. de Ixtlilxochitl,—also Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 49.

“No consentiendo que haya sacrificios de gente humana, que Dios se enoja de ello, castigando con rigor á los que lo hicieren; que el dolor que llevo es no tener luz, ni conocimiento, ni ser merecedor de conocer tan gran Dios, el qual tengo por cierto que ya que los presentes no lo conozcan, ha de venir tiempo en que sea conocido y adorado en esta tierra.” MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.

Idem, ubi supra; also Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 49.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 49.

“Solia amonestar á sus hijos en secreto que no adorasen á aquellas figuras de ídolos, y que aquello que hiciesen en público fuese solo por cumplimiento.” Ixtlilxochitl.

Idem, ubi supra.

The name Nezahualpilli signifies “the prince for whom one has fasted,”—in allusion, no doubt, to the long fast of his father previous to his birth. (See Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 45.) I have explained the meaning of the equally euphonious name of his parent, Nezahualcoyotl. (Ante, ch. 4.) If it be true that

“De las concubinas la que mas privó con el rey fué la que llamaban la Señora de Tula, no por linage, sino porque era hija de un mercader, y era tan sabia que competia con el rey y con los mas sabios de su reyno, y era en la poesía muy aventajada, que con estas gracias y dones naturales tenia al rey muy sugeto á su voluntad de tal manera que lo que queria alcanzaba de él, y así vivia sola por si con grande aparato y magestad en unos palacios que el rey le mandó edificar.” Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 57.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 67.—The Tezcucan historian records several appalling examples of this severity,—one in particular, in relation to his guilty wife. The story, reminding one of the tales of an Oriental harem, has been translated for the Appendix, Part 2, No. 4. See also Torquemada (Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 66), and Zurita (Rapport, pp. 108, 109). He was the terror, in particular, of all unjust magistrates. They had little favor to expect from the man who could stifle the voice of nature in his own bosom in obedience to the laws. As Suetonius said of a prince who had not his virtue, “Vehemens et in coercendis quidem delictis immodicus.” Vita Galbæ, sec. 9.

Torquemada saw the remains of this, or what passed for such, in his day. Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 64.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 73, 74.—This sudden transfer of empire from the Tezcucans, at the close of the reigns of two of their ablest monarchs, is so improbable that one cannot but doubt if they ever possessed it,—at least to the extent claimed by the patriotic historian. See ante, chap. 1, note 25, and the corresponding text.

Ibid., cap. 72.—The reader will find a particular account of these prodigies, better authenticated than most miracles, in a future page of this history.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 75.—Or, rather, at the age of fifty, if the historian is right in placing his birth, as he does in a preceding chapter, in 1465. (See cap. 46.) It is not easy to decide what is true, when the writer does not take the trouble to be true to himself.

His obsequies were celebrated with sanguinary pomp. Two hundred male and one hundred female slaves were sacrificed at his tomb. His body was consumed, amidst a heap of jewels, precious stuffs, and incense, on a funeral pile; and the ashes, deposited in a golden urn, were placed in the great temple of Huitzilopochtli, for whose worship the king, notwithstanding the lessons of his father, had some partiality. Ixtlilxochitl.

[Ixtlilxochitl (born about 1568) wrote in the early part of the seventeenth century. A certificate which he presented to the viceroy bears the date of November 18, 1608. The error is apparently a clerical one; though a previous passage in the text seems to indicate some confusion on the author’s part.]

[Señor Ramirez objects to this remark, on the ground that, however obscure the hieroglyphics may now seem, at the time of Ixtlilxochitl they were, in his language, “as plain as our letters to those who were acquainted with them.” Notas y Esclarecimientos, p. 10.—K.]

The names of many animals in the New World, indeed, have been frequently borrowed from the Old; but the species are very different. “When the Spaniards landed in America,” says an eminent naturalist, “they did not find a single animal they were acquainted with; not one of the quadrupeds of Europe, Asia, or Africa.” Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man (London, 1819), p. 250.

Acosta, lib. 1, cap. 16.

[The existence at some former period of such an island, or rather continent, seems to be regarded by geologists as a well-attested fact. But few would admit that its subsidence can have taken place through any sudden convulsion or within the period of human existence. Such, however, is the theory maintained by M. Brasseur de Bourbourg, who dates the event “six or seven thousand years ago,” and believes that the traditions of it have been faithfully preserved. This is the great cataclysm with which all mythology begins. It may be traced through the myths of Greece, Egypt, India, and America, all being identical and having a common origin. It is the subject of the Teo-Amoxtli, of which several of the Mexican manuscripts, the Borgian and Dresden Codices in particular, are the hieroglyphical transcriptions, and of which “the actual letter,” “in the Nahuatlac language,” is found in a manuscript in Boturini’s Collection.

Count Carli shows much ingenuity and learning in support of the famous Egyptian tradition, recorded by Plato in his “Timæus,”—of the good faith of which the Italian philosopher nothing doubts. Lettres Améric., tom. ii. let. 36-39.

Garcia, Orígen de los Indios de el nuevo Mundo (Madrid, 1729), cap. 4.

Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 1, cap. 8.

Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (London, 1826), vol. i. p. 81, et seq.—He may find an orthodox authority of respectable antiquity, for a similar hypothesis, in St. Augustine, who plainly intimates his belief that, “as by God’s command, at the time of the creation, the earth brought forth the living creature after his kind, so a similar process must have taken place after the deluge, in islands too remote to be reached by animals from the continent.” De Civitate Dei, ap. Opera (Parisiis, 1636), tom. v. p. 987.

Beechey, Voyage to the Pacific and Beering’s Strait (London, 1831), Part 2, Appendix.—Humboldt, Examen critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau-Continent (Paris, 1837), tom. ii. p. 58.

Whatever skepticism may have been entertained as to the visit of the Northmen, in the eleventh century, to the coasts of the great continent, it is probably set at rest in the minds of most scholars since the publication of the original documents by the Royal Society at Copenhagen. (See, in particular, Antiquitates Americanæ (Hafniæ, 1837), pp. 79-200.) How far south they penetrated is not so easily settled.

The most remarkable example, probably, of a direct intercourse between remote points is furnished us by Captain Cook, who found the inhabitants of New Zealand not only with the same religion, but speaking the same language, as the people of Otaheite, distant more than 2000 miles. The comparison of the two vocabularies establishes the fact. Cook’s Voyages (Dublin, 1784), vol. i. book 1, chap. 8.

The eloquent Lyell closes an enumeration of some extraordinary and well-attested instances of this kind with remarking, “Were the whole of mankind now cut off, with the exception of one family, inhabiting the old or new continent, or Australia, or even some coral islet of the Pacific, we should expect their descendants, though they should never become more enlightened than the South Sea Islanders or the Esquimaux, to spread, in the course of ages, over the whole earth, diffused partly by the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence in a limited district, and partly by the accidental drifting of canoes by tides and currents to distant shores.” Principles of Geology (London, 1832), vol. ii. p. 121.

“La question générale de la première origine des habitans d’un continent est au-delà des limites prescrites à l’histoire; peut-être même n’est-elle pas une question philosophique.” Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. i. p. 349.

Ante, p. 75.

The fanciful division of time into four or five cycles or ages was found among the Hindoos (Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. mem. 7), the Thibetians (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 210), the Persians (Bailly, Traité de l’Astronomie (Paris, 1787), tom. i. discours préliminaire), the Greeks (Hesiod, Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, v. 108, et seq.), and other people, doubtless. The five ages in the Grecian cosmogony had reference to moral rather than physical phenomena,—a proof of higher civilization.

The Chaldean and Hebrew accounts of the Deluge are nearly the same. The parallel is pursued in Palfrey’s ingenious Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities (Boston, 1840), vol. ii. lect. 21, 22. Among the pagan writers, none approach so near to the Scripture narrative as Lucian, who, in his account of the Greek traditions, speaks of the ark, and the pairs of different kinds of animals. (De De Syri, sec. 12.) The same thing is found in the Bhagawatn Purana, a Hindoo poem of great antiquity. (Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. mem. 7.) The simple tradition of a universal inundation was preserved among most of the aborigines, probably, of the Western World. See McCulloh, Researches, p. 147.

This tradition of the Aztecs is recorded in an ancient hieroglyphical map, first published in Gemelli Carreri’s Giro del Mondo. (See tom. vi. p. 38, ed. Napoli, 1700.) Its authenticity, as well as the integrity of Carreri himself, on which some suspicions have been thrown (see Robertson’s America (London, 1796), vol. iii. note 26), has been successfully vindicated by Boturini, Clavigero, and Humboldt, all of whom trod in the steps of the Italian traveller. (Boturini, Idea, p. 54.—Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, pp. 223, 224.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 24.) The map is a copy from one in the curious collection of Siguenza. It has all the character of a genuine Aztec picture, with the appearance of being retouched, especially in the costumes, by some later artist. The painting of the four ages, in the Vatican Codex, No. 3730, represents, also, the two figures in the boat, escaping the great cataclysm. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 7.

I have met with no other voucher for this remarkable tradition than Clavigero (Stor. del Messico, dissert. 1), a good, though certainly not the best, authority, when he gives us no reason for our faith. Humboldt, however, does not distrust the tradition. (See Vues des Cordillères, p. 226.) He is not so skeptical as Vater; who, in allusion to the stories of the Flood, remarks, “I have purposely omitted noticing the resemblance of religious notions, for I do not see how it is possible to separate from such views every influence of Christian ideas, if it be only from an imperceptible confusion in the mind of the narrator.” Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde (Berlin, 1812), Theil iii. Abtheil. 3, p. 82, note.

This story, so irreconcilable with the vulgar Aztec tradition, which admits only two survivors of the Deluge, was still lingering among the natives of the place on M. de Humboldt’s visit there. (Vues des Cordillères, pp. 31, 32.) It agrees with that given by the interpreter of the Vatican Codex (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 192, et seq.); a writer—probably a monk of the sixteenth century—in whom ignorance and dogmatism contend for mastery. See a precious specimen of both, in his account of the Aztec chronology, in the very pages above referred to.

A tradition, very similar to the Hebrew one, existed among the Chaldeans and the Hindoos. (Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. mem. 16.) The natives of Chiapa, also, according to the bishop Nuñez de la Vega, had a story, cited as genuine by Humboldt (Vues des Cordillères, p. 148), which not only agrees with the Scripture account of the manner in which Babel was built, but with that of the subsequent dispersion and the confusion of tongues. A very marvellous coincidence! But who shall vouch for the authenticity of the tradition? The bishop flourished towards the close of the seventeenth century. He drew his information from hieroglyphical maps, and an Indian MS., which Boturini in vain endeavored to recover. In exploring these, he borrowed the aid of the natives, who, as Boturini informs us, frequently led the good man into errors and absurdities; of which he gives several specimens. (Idea, p. 116, et seq.)—Boturini himself has fallen into an error equally great, in regard to a map of this same Cholulan pyramid, which Clavigero shows, far from being a genuine antique, was the forgery of a later day. (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 130, nota.) It is impossible to get a firm footing in the quicksands of tradition. The further we are removed from the Conquest, the more difficult it becomes to decide what belongs to the primitive Aztec and what to the Christian convert.

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 1, cap. 6; lib. 6, cap. 28, 33.—Torquemada, not content with the honest record of his predecessor, whose MS. lay before him, tells us that the Mexican Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. (Monarch, Ind., lib. 6, cap. 31.) The ancient interpreters of the Vatican and Tellerian Codices add the further tradition of her bringing sin and sorrow into the world by plucking the forbidden rose (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi., explan. of Pl. 7, 20); and Veytia remembers to have seen a Toltec or Aztec map representing a garden with a single tree in it, round which was coiled the serpent with a human face! (Hist. antig., lib. 1, cap. 1.) After this we may be prepared for Lord Kingsborough’s deliberate conviction that the “Aztecs had a clear knowledge of the Old Testament, and, most probably, of the New, though somewhat corrupted by time and hieroglyphics”! Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 409.

Ante, pp. 71-73.

Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 1, cap. 15.

Ibid., lib. 1, cap. 19.—A sorry argument, even for a casuist. See, also, the elaborate dissertation of Dr. Mier (apud Sahagun, lib. 3, Suplem.), which settles the question entirely to the satisfaction of his reporter, Bustamante.{*}

See, among others, Lord Kingsborough’s reading of the Borgian Codex, and the interpreters of the Vatican (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi., explan. of Pl. 3, 10, 41), equally well skilled with his lordship—and Sir Hudibras—in unravelling mysteries

[See note, ante, p. 73.]

[The Cross symbol has been the subject of endless controversy. As usual, we find that Bancroft has given the subject careful consideration. (Native Races, iii.) Brinton (Myths of the New World, pp. 95, 96) quotes authorities to demonstrate in it the four cardinal points, the rain-bringers, the symbol of life and health. He was the first writer to connect the Palenque cross with the four cardinal points. Charles Rau (Palenque Tablet in U. S. National Museum, in No. 331 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge) concludes that it is a Phallic symbol. Bandelier thinks it was the emblem of fire. Squier calls it the tree of life of the Mexicans. Payne (America, ii. p. 86) thinks it was a representation of a human sacrifice to the sun. The “cross” is simply the conventional representation of a tree. At Palenque the bird which surmounts the tree is a turkey. The celebrant, decorated with a necklace, makes an offering to the winged deity. The living fetish was called Quetzalhuexolotl, and the tree was called “the tree of the plumed turkey.” The sacrifice presented is a diminutive human figure. The monstrous head which the roots of the tree surround is human, but with serpentine details. It represents the “Female Serpent,” the earth goddess to whom the tree owes its growth and nutrition.

Antiquités Mexicaines, exped. 3, Pl. 36.—The figures are surrounded by hieroglyphics of most arbitrary character, perhaps phonetic. (See, also, Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 3, cap. I.—Gomara, Crónica de la Nueva-España, cap. 15, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.) Mr. Stephens considers that the celebrated “Cozumel Cross,” preserved at Merida, which claims the credit of being the same originally worshipped by the natives of Cozumel, is, after all, nothing but a cross that was erected by the Spaniards in one of their own temples in that island after the Conquest. The fact he regards as “completely invalidating the strongest proof offered at this day that the Cross was recognized by the Indians as a symbol of worship.” (Travels in Yucatan, vol. ii. chap. 20.) But, admitting the truth of this statement, that the Cozumel Cross is only a Christian relic, which the ingenious traveller has made extremely probable, his inference is by no means admissible. Nothing could be more natural than that the friars in Merida should endeavor to give celebrity to their convent by making it the possessor of so remarkable a monument as the very relic which proved, in their eyes, that Christianity had been preached at some earlier date among the natives.

“Lo recibian con gran reverencia, humiliacion, y lágrimas, diciendo que comian la carne de su Dios.” Veytia, Hist. antig. lib. 1, cap. 18.—Also, Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 24.

Ante, p. 78.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 37.—That the reader may see for himself how like, yet how unlike, the Aztec rite was to the Christian, I give the translation of Sahagun’s account, at length: “When everything necessary for the baptism had been made ready, all the relations of the child were assembled, and the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was summoned. At early dawn, they met together in the court-yard of the house. When the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water, while those about her placed the ornaments which had been prepared for the baptism in the midst of the court. To perform the rite of baptism, she placed herself with her face towards the west, and immediately began to go through certain ceremonies.... After this she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, ‘O my child! take and receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash and to purify. I pray that these heavenly drops may enter into your body, and dwell there; that they may destroy and remove from you all the evil and sin which was given to you before the beginning of the world; since all of us are under its power, being all the children of Chalchivitlycue’ [the goddess of water].

Among Egyptian symbols we meet with several specimens of the Cross. One, according to Justus Lipsius, signified “life to come.” (See his treatise, De Cruce (Lutetiæ Parisiorum, 1598), lib. 3, cap. 8.) We find another in Champollion’s catalogue, which he interprets “support or saviour.” (Précis, tom. ii., Tableau gén., Nos. 277, 348.) Some curious examples of the reverence paid to this sign by the ancients have been collected by McCulloh (Researches, p. 330, et seq.), and by Humboldt, in his late work, Géographie du Nouveau-Continent, tom. ii. p. 354, et seq.

“Ante, Deos homini quod conciliare valeret Far erat,”

Water for purification and other religious rites is frequently noticed by the classical writers. Thus, Euripides:

The difficulty of obtaining anything like a faithful report from the natives is the subject of complaint from more than one writer, and explains the great care taken by Sahagun to compare their narratives with each other. See Hist. de Nueva-España, Prólogo,—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., Pról.,—Boturini, Idea, p. 116.

The parallel was so closely pressed by Torquemada that he was compelled to suppress the chapter containing it, on the publication of his book. See the Proemio to the edition of 1723, sec. 2.

“The devil,” says Herrera, “chose to imitate, in everything, the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and their subsequent wanderings.” (Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 3, cap. 10.) But all that has been done by monkish annalist and missionary to establish the parallel with the children of Israel falls far short of Lord Kingsborough’s learned labors, spread over nearly two hundred folio pages. (See Antiq. of Mexico, tom. vi. pp. 282-410.) Quantum inane!

The word משיח from which is derived Christ, “the anointed,” is still more nearly—not “precisely,” as Lord Kingsborough states (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 186)—identical with that of Mexi, or Mesi, the chief who was said to have led the Aztecs on the plains of Anahuac.

Interp. of Cod. Tel.-Rem. et Vat., Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 3, Suplem.—Veytia, Hist. antig., lib. 1, cap. 16.

This opinion finds favor with the best Spanish and Mexican writers, from the Conquest downwards. Solís sees nothing improbable in the fact that “the malignant influence, so frequently noticed in sacred history, should be found equally in profane.” Hist. de la Conquista, lib. 2, cap. 4.

D. G. Brinton, International Congress of Anthropology, 1893 (Harper’s Magazine, March, 1903, p. 534). “Up to the present time there has not been shown a single dialect, not an art or an institution, not a myth or religious rite, not a domesticated plant or animal, not a tool, weapon, game, or symbol, in use in America at the time of the discovery, which had been previously imported from Asia, or from any other continent of the Old World.”—M.

The bridal ceremony of the Hindoos, in particular, contains curious points of analogy with the Mexican. (See Asiatic Researches, vol. vii. mem. 9.) The institution of a numerous priesthood, with the practices of confession and penance, was familiar to the Tartar people. (Maundeville, Voiage, chap. 23.) And monastic establishments were found in Thibet and Japan from the earliest ages. Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 179.

“Doubtless,” says the ingenious Carli, “the fashion of burning the corpse, collecting the ashes in a vase, burying them under pyramidal mounds, with the immolation of wives and servants at the funeral, all remind one of the customs of Egypt and Hindostan.” Lettres Améric., tom. ii. let. 10.

Marco Polo notices a civilized people in Southeastern China, and another in Japan, who drank the blood and ate the flesh of their captives, esteeming it the most savory food in the world,—“la più saporita et migliore, che si possa truovar al mondo.” (Viaggi, lib. 2, cap. 75; lib. 3, 13, 14.) The Mongols, according to Sir John Maundeville, regarded the ears “sowced in vynegre” as a particular dainty. Voiage, chap. 23.

Marco Polo, Viaggi, lib. 2, cap. 10.—Maundeville, Voiage, cap. 20, et alibi.—See, also, a striking parallel between the Eastern Asiatics and Americans, in the Supplement to Ranking’s “Historical Researches;” a work embodying many curious details of Oriental history and manners in support of a whimsical theory.

Morton, Crania Americana (Philadelphia, 1839), pp. 224-246.—The industrious author establishes this singular fact by examples drawn from a great number of nations in North and South America.

Gomara, Crónica de la Nueva-España, cap. 202, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. pp. 94, 95.—McCulloh (Researches, p. 198), who cites the Asiatic Researches.—Dr. McCulloh, in his single volume, has probably brought together a larger mass of materials for the illustration of the aboriginal history of the continent than any other writer in the language. In the selection of his facts he has shown much sagacity, as well as industry; and, if the formal and somewhat repulsive character of the style has been unfavorable to a popular interest, the work must always have an interest for those who are engaged in the study of the Indian antiquities. His fanciful speculations on the subject of Mexican mythology may amuse those whom they fail to convince.

Ante, p. 126, et seq.

This will be better shown by enumerating the zodiacal signs, used as the names of the years by the Eastern Asiatics. Among the Mongols, these were—1, mouse; 2, ox; 3, leopard; 4, hare; 5, crocodile; 6, serpent; 7, horse; 8, sheep; 9, monkey; 10, hen; 11, dog; 12, hog. The Mantchou Tartars, Japanese, and Thibetians have nearly the same terms, substituting, however, for No. 3, tiger; 5, dragon; 8, goat. In the Mexican signs for the names of the days we also meet with hare, serpent, monkey, dog. Instead of the “leopard,” “crocodile,” and “hen,”—neither of which animals was known in Mexico at the time of the Conquest,—we find the ocelotl, the lizard, and the eagle.—The lunar calendar of the Hindoos exhibits a correspondence equally extraordinary. Six of the terms agree with those of the Aztecs, namely, serpent, cane, razor, path of the sun, dog’s tail, house. (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 152.) These terms, it will be observed, are still more arbitrarily selected, not being confined to animals; as, indeed, the hieroglyphics of the Aztec calendar were derived indifferently from them, and other objects, like the signs of our zodiac. These scientific analogies are set in the strongest light by M. de Humboldt, and occupy a large and, to the philosophical inquirer, the most interesting portion of his great work. (Vues des Cordillères, pp.

There is some inaccuracy in Humboldt’s definition of the ocelotl as “the tiger,” “the jaguar.” (Ibid., p. 159.) It is smaller than the jaguar, though quite as ferocious, and is as graceful and beautiful as the leopard, which it more nearly resembles. It is a native of New Spain, where the tiger is not known. (See Buffon, Histoire naturelle (Paris, An VIII), tom. ii., vox Ocelotl.) The adoption of this latter name, therefore, in the Aztec calendar, leads to an inference somewhat exaggerated.

Both the Tartars and the Aztecs indicated the year by its sign; as the “year of the hare” or “rabbit,” etc. The Asiatic signs, likewise, far from being limited to the years and months, presided also over days, and even hours. (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 165.) The Mexicans had also astrological symbols appropriated to the hours. Gama, Descripcion, Parte 2, p. 117.

Ante, p. 127, note.

Achilles Tatius notices a custom of the Egyptians,—who, as the sun descended towards Capricorn, put on mourning, but, as the days lengthened, their fears subsided, they robed themselves in white, and, crowned with flowers, gave themselves up to jubilee, like the Aztecs. This account, transcribed by Carli’s French translator, and by M. de Humboldt, is more fully criticized by M. Jomard in the Vues des Cordillères, p. 309, et seq.

[See note, ante, p. 373.]

Jefferson (Notes on Virginia (London, 1787), p. 164), confirmed by Humboldt (Essai politique, tom. i. p. 353). Mr. Gallatin comes to a different conclusion. (Transactions of American Antiquarian Society (Cambridge, 1836), vol. ii. p. 161.) The great number of American dialects and languages is well explained by the unsocial nature of a hunter’s life, requiring the country to be parcelled out into small and separate territories for the means of subsistence.

Philologists have, indeed, detected two curious exceptions, in the Congo and primitive Basque; from which, however, the Indian languages differ in many essential points. See Du Ponceau’s Report, ap. Transactions of the Lit. and Hist. Committee of the Am. Phil. Society, vol. i.

Vater (Mithridates, Theil iii. Abtheil. 3, p. 70), who fixes on the Rio Gila and the Isthmus of Darien as the boundaries within which traces of the Mexican language were to be discerned. Clavigero estimates the number of dialects at thirty-five. I have used the more guarded statement of M. de Humboldt, who adds that fourteen of these languages have been digested into dictionaries and grammars. Essai politique, tom. i. p. 352.

No one has done so much towards establishing this important fact as that estimable scholar, Mr. Du Ponceau. And the frankness with which he has admitted the exception that disturbed his favorite hypothesis shows that he is far more wedded to science than to system. See an interesting account of it, in his prize essay before the Institute, Mémoire sur le Système grammaticale des Langues de quelques Nations Indiennes de l’Amérique. (Paris, 1838.)

The Mexican language, in particular, is most flexible; admitting of combinations so easily that the most simple ideas are often buried under a load of accessories. The forms of expression, though picturesque, were thus made exceedingly cumbrous. A “priest,” for example, was called notlazomahuizteopixcatatzin, meaning “venerable minister of God, that I love as my father.” A still more comprehensive word is amatlacuilolitquitcatlaxtlahuitli, signifying “the reward given to a messenger who bears a hieroglyphical map conveying intelligence.”

See, in particular, for the latter view of the subject, the arguments of Mr. Gallatin, in his acute and masterly disquisition on the Indian tribes; a disquisition that throws more light on the intricate topics of which it treats than whole volumes that have preceded it. Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. ii. Introd., sec. 6.

This comparative anatomy of the languages of the two hemispheres, begun by Barton (Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (Philadelphia, 1797)), has been extended by Vater (Mithridates, Theil iii. Abtheil. 1, p. 348, et seq.). A selection of the most striking analogies may be found, also, in Malte Brun, book 75, table.

Othomi, from otho, “stationary,” and mi, “nothing.” (Najera, Dissert., ut infra.) The etymology intimates the condition of this rude nation of warriors, who, imperfectly reduced by the Aztec arms, roamed over the high lands north of the Valley of Mexico.

See Najera’s Dissertatio de Lingua Othomitorum, ap. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. v. New Series.—The author, a learned Mexican, has given a most satisfactory analysis of this remarkable language, which stands alone among the idioms of the New World, as the Basque—the solitary wreck, perhaps, of a primitive age—exists among those of the Old.

Barton, p. 92.—Heckewelder, chap. 1, ap. Transactions of the Hist. and Lit. Committee of the Am. Phil. Soc., vol. i.—The various traditions have been assembled by M. Warden, in the Antiquités Mexicaines, part 2, p. 185, et seq.

The recent work of Mr. Delafield (Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America (Cincinnati, 1839)) has an engraving of one of these maps, said to have been obtained by Mr. Bullock from Boturini’s collection. Two such are specified on page 10 of that antiquary’s Catalogue. This map has all the appearance of a genuine Aztec painting, of the rudest character. We may recognize, indeed, the symbols of some dates and places, with others denoting the aspect of the country, whether fertile or barren, a state of war or peace, etc. But it is altogether too vague, and we know too little of the allusions, to gather any knowledge from it of the course of the Aztec migration.—Gemelli Carreri’s celebrated chart contains the names of many places on the route, interpreted, perhaps, by Siguenza himself, to whom it belonged (Giro del Mondo, tom. vi. 56); and Clavigero has endeavored to ascertain the various localities with some precision. (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 160, et seq.) But, as they are all within the boundaries of New Spain, and, indeed, south of the Rio Gila, they throw little light, of course, on the vexed question of the primitive abodes of the Aztecs.

This may be fairly gathered from the agreement of the traditionary interpretations of the maps of the various people of Anahuac, according to Veytia; who, however, admits that it is “next to impossible,” with the lights of the present day, to determine the precise route taken by the Mexicans. (Hist, antig., tom. i. cap. 2.) Lorenzana is not so modest. “Los Mexicanos por tradicion viniéron por el norte,” says he, “y se saben ciertamente sus mansiones.” (Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 81, nota.) There are some antiquaries who see best in the dark.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 2, et seq.—Idem, Relaciones, MS.—Veytia, Hist. antig., ubi supra.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., tom. i. lib. 1.

In the province of Sonora, especially along the California Gulf. The Cora language, above all, of which a regular grammar has been published, and which is spoken in New Biscay, about 30° north, so much resembles the Mexican that Vater refers them both to a common stock. Mithridates, Theil iii. Abtheil. 3, p. 143.

On the southern bank of this river are ruins of large dimensions, described by the missionary Pedro Font on his visit there in 1775. (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 538.)—At a place of the same name, Casas Grandes, about 33° north, and, like the former, a supposed station of the Aztecs, still more extensive remains are to be found; large enough, indeed, according to a late traveller, Lieut. Hardy, for a population of 20,000 or 30,000 souls. The country for leagues is covered with these remains, as well as with utensils of earthenware, obsidian, and other relics. A drawing which the author has given of a painted jar or vase may remind one of the Etruscan. “There were, also, good specimens of earthen images in the Egyptian style,” he observes, “which are, to me at least, so perfectly uninteresting that I was at no pains to procure any of them.” (Travels in the Interior of Mexico (London, 1829), pp. 464-466.) The lieutenant was neither a Boturini nor a Belzoni.

Vater has examined the languages of three of these nations, between 50° and 60° north, and collated their vocabularies with the Mexican, showing the probability of a common origin of many of the words in each. Mithridates, Theil iii. Abtheil. 3, p. 212.

The Mexicans are noticed by M. de Humboldt as distinguished from the other aborigines whom he had seen, by the quantity both of beard and moustaches. (Essai politique, tom. i. p. 361.) The modern Mexican, however, broken in spirit and fortunes, bears as little resemblance, probably, in physical as in moral characteristics to his ancestors, the fierce and independent Aztecs.

Prichard, Physical History, vol. i. pp. 167-169, 182, et seq.—Morton, Crania Americana, p. 66.—McCulloh, Researches, p. 18.—Lawrence, Lectures, pp. 317, 565.

Thus we find, amidst the generally prevalent copper or cinnamon tint, nearly all gradations of color, from the European white, to a black, almost African; while the complexion capriciously varies among different tribes in the neighborhood of each other. See examples in Humboldt (Essai politique, tom. i. pp. 358, 359), also Prichard (Physical History, vol. ii. pp. 452, 522, et alibi), a writer whose various research and dispassionate judgment have made his work a text-book in this department of science.

Such is the conclusion of Dr. Warren, whose excellent collection has afforded him ample means for study and comparison. (See his Remarks before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, ap. London Athenæum, Oct., 1837.) In the specimens collected by Dr. Morton, however, the barbarous tribes would seem to have a somewhat larger facial angle, and a greater quantity of brain, than the semi-civilized. Crania Americana, p. 259.

“On ne peut se refuser d’admettre que l’espèce humaine n’offre pas de races plus voisines que le sont celles des Américaines, des Mongols, des Mantchoux, et des Malais.” Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. i. p. 367.—Also, Prichard, Physical History, vol. i. pp. 184-186; vol. ii. pp. 365-367.—Lawrence, Lectures, p. 365.

Dr. Morton’s splendid work on American crania has gone far to supply the requisite information. Out of about one hundred and fifty specimens of skulls, of which he has ascertained the dimensions with admirable precision, one-third belong to the semi-civilized races; and of them thirteen are Mexican. The number of these last is too small to found any general conclusions upon, considering the great diversity found in individuals of the same nation, not to say kindred.—Blumenbach’s observations on American skulls were chiefly made, according to Prichard (Physical History, vol. i. pp. 183, 184), from specimens of the Carib tribes, as unfavorable, perhaps, as any on the continent.

Yet these specimens are not so easy to be obtained. With uncommon advantages for procuring these myself in Mexico, I have not succeeded in obtaining any specimens of the genuine Aztec skull. The difficulty of this may be readily comprehended by any one who considers the length of time that has elapsed since the Conquest, and that the burial-places of the ancient Mexicans have continued to be used by their descendants. Dr. Morton more than once refers to his specimens as those of the “genuine Toltec skull, from cemeteries in Mexico, older than the Conquest.” (Crania Americana, pp. 152, 155, 231, et alibi.) But how does he know that the heads are Toltec? That nation is reported to have left the country about the middle of the eleventh century, nearly eight hundred years ago,—according to Ixtlilxochitl, indeed, a century earlier; and it seems much more probable that the specimens now found in these burial-places should belong to some of the races who have since occupied the country, than to one so far removed. The presumption is manifestly too feeble to authorize any positive inference.

The tower of Belus, with its retreating stories, described by Herodotus (Clio, sec. 181), has been selected as the model of the teocalli; which leads Vater somewhat shrewdly to remark that it is strange no evidence of this should appear in the erection of similar structures by the Aztecs in the whole course of their journey to Anahuac. (Mithridates, Theil. iii. Abtheil. 3, pp. 74, 75.) The learned Niebuhr finds the elements of the Mexican temple in the mythic tomb of Porsenna. (Roman History, Eng. trans. (London, 1827), vol. i. p. 88.) The resemblance to the accumulated pyramids composing this monument is not very obvious. Com. Pliny (Hist. Nat., lib. 36, sec. 19). Indeed, the antiquarian may be thought to encroach on the poet’s province when he finds in Etruscan fable—“cum omnia excedat fabulositas,” as Pliny characterizes this—the origin of Aztec science.

See the powerful description of Lucan, Pharsalia, lib. 9, v. 966.—The Latin bard has been surpassed by the Italian, in the beautiful stanza beginning Giace l’ alta Cartago (Gerusalemme Liberata, c. 15, s. 20), which may be said to have been expanded by Lord Byron into a canto,—the fourth of Childe Harold.

The most remarkable remains on the proper Mexican soil are the temple or fortress of Xochicalco, not many miles from the capital. It stands on a rocky eminence, nearly a league in circumference, cut into terraces faced with stone. The building on the summit is seventy-five feet long and sixty-six broad. It is of hewn granite, put together without cement, but with great exactness. It was constructed in the usual pyramidal, terraced form, rising by a succession of stories, each smaller than that below it. The number of these is now uncertain; the lower one alone remaining entire. This is sufficient, however, to show the nice style of execution, from the sharp, salient cornices, and the hieroglyphical emblems with which it is covered, all cut in the hard stone. As the detached blocks found among the ruins are sculptured with bas-reliefs in like manner, it is probable that the whole building was covered with them. It seems probable, also, as the same pattern extends over different stones, that the work was executed after the walls were raised.—In the hill beneath, subterraneous galleries, six feet wide and high, have been cut to the length of one hundred and eighty feet, where they terminate in two halls, the vaulted ceilings of which connect by a sort of tunnel with the buildings above. These subterraneous works are also lined with hewn stone.

Ante, pp. 196-199.

It is impossible to look at Waldeck’s finished drawings of buildings, where Time seems scarcely to have set his mark on the nicely chiselled stone, and the clear tints are hardly defaced by a weather-stain, without regarding the artist’s work as a restoration; a picture true, it may be, of those buildings in the day of their glory, but not of their decay.—Cogolludo, who saw them in the middle of the seventeenth century, speaks of them with admiration, as works of “accomplished architects,” of whom history has preserved no tradition. Historia de Yucatan (Madrid, 1688), lib. 4, cap. 2.{*}

In the original text is a description of some of these ruins, especially of those of Mitla and Palenque. It would have had novelty at the time in which it was written, since the only accounts of these buildings were in the colossal publications of Lord Kingsborough, and in the Antiquités Mexicaines, not very accessible to most readers. But it is unnecessary to repeat descriptions now familiar to every one, and so much better executed than they can be by me, in the spirited pages of Stephens.

[Bandelier (Archæological Tour in Mexico) gives an account of the statues, etc., found in Mexico up to the year 1881.—M.]

See, in particular, two terra-cotta busts with helmets, found in Oaxaca, which might well pass for Greek, both in the style of the heads and the casques that cover them. Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. iii. Exp. 2, Pl. 36.

Dupaix speaks of these tools as made of pure copper. But doubtless there was some alloy mixed with it, as was practised by the Aztecs and Egyptians; otherwise their edges must have been easily turned by the hard substances on which they were employed.

Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. pp. 246-254.

Ante, p. 155

Waldeck, Atlas pittoresque, p. 73.—The fortress of Xochicalco was also colored with a red paint (Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. i. p. 20); and a cement of the same color covered the Toltec pyramid at Teotihuacan, according to Mr. Bullock, Six Months in Mexico, vol. ii. p. 143.

Description de l’Egypte, Antiq., tom. ii. cap. 9, sec. 4.—The huge image of the Sphinx was originally colored red. (Clarke’s Travels, vol. v. p. 202.) Indeed, many of the edifices, as well as statues, of ancient Greece, also, still exhibit traces of having been painted.

The various causes of the stationary condition of art in Egypt, for so many ages, are clearly exposed by the Duke di Serradifalco, in his Antichità della Sicilia (Palermo, 1834, tom. ii. pp. 33, 34); a work in which the author, while illustrating the antiquities of a little island, has thrown a flood of light on the arts and literary culture of ancient Greece.

“The ideal is not always the beautiful,” as Winckelmann truly says, referring to the Egyptian figures. (Histoire de l’Art chez les Anciens, liv. 4, chap. 2, trad. Fr.) It is not impossible, however, that the portraits mentioned in the text may be copies from life. Some of the rude tribes of America distorted their infants’ heads into forms quite as fantastic; and Garcilaso de la Vega speaks of a nation discovered by the Spaniards in Florida, with a formation apparently not unlike the Palenque: “Tienen cabezas increiblemente largas, y ahusadas para arriba, que las ponen así con artificio, atándoselas desde el punto, que nascen las criaturas, hasta que son de nueve ó diez años.” La Florida (Madrid, 1723), p. 190.

For a notice of this remarkable codex, see ante, p. 119. There is, indeed, a resemblance, in the use of straight lines and dots, between the Palenque writing and the Dresden MS. Possibly these dots denoted years, like the rounds in the Mexican system.

The hieroglyphics are arranged in perpendicular lines. The heads are uniformly turned towards the right, as in the Dresden MS.

“Les ruines,” says the enthusiastic chevalier Le Noir, “sans nom, à qui l’on a donné celui de Palenque, peuvent remonter comme les plus anciennes ruines du monde à trois mille ans. Ceci n’est point mon opinion seule; c’est celle de tous les voyageurs qui ont vu les ruines dont il s’agit, de tous les archéologues qui en ont examiné les dessins ou lu les descriptions, enfin des historiens qui ont fait des recherches, et qui n’ont rien trouvé dans les annales du monde qui fasse soupçonner l’époque de la fondation de tels monuments, dont l’origine se perd dans la nuit des temps.” (Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. ii., Examen, p. 73.) Colonel Galindo, fired with the contemplation of the American ruins, pronounces this country the true cradle of civilization, whence it passed over to China, and latterly to Europe, which, whatever “its foolish vanity” may pretend, has but just started in the march of improvement! See his Letter on Copan, ap. Trans, of Am. Ant. Soc., vol. ii.

From these sources of information, and especially from the number of the concentric rings in some old trees, and the incrustation of stalactites found on the ruins of Palenque, M. Waldeck computes their age at between two and three thousand years. (Voyage en Yucatan, p. 78.) The criterion, as far as the trees are concerned, cannot be relied on in an advanced stage of their growth; and as to the stalactite formations, they are obviously affected by too many casual circumstances, to afford the basis of an accurate calculation.{*}

Waldeck, Voyage en Yucatan, ubi supra.

Antiquités Mexicaines, Examen, p. 76.—Hardly deep enough, however, to justify Captain Dupaix’s surmise of the antediluvian existence of these buildings; especially considering that the accumulation was in the sheltered position of an interior court.

[Ober, Travels in Mexico, p. 76. This granite pavement with its carven tortoises has never been seen by mortal man, although described by the unreliable and wonder-seeking Waldeck. It is true that there are many sculptures of this kind in Uxmal, but only on the doors and cornices. Ancona in his history says, “Estes tortugas, expuestas a las piedras de la muchedumbre, solo han existido en la imaginacion de Waldeck.” Ancona was the native historian of Yucatan.—M.]

Waldeck, Voyage en Yucatan, p. 97.

The chaplain of Grijalva speaks with admiration of the “lofty towers of stone and lime, some of them very ancient,” found in Yucatan. (Itinerario, MS. (1518).) Bernal Diaz, with similar expressions of wonder, refers the curious antique relics found there to the Jews. (Hist, de la Conquista, cap. 2, 6.) Alvarado, in a letter to Cortés, expatiates on the “maravillosos et grandes edificios” to be seen in Guatemala. (Oviedo, Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 42.) According to Cogolludo, the Spaniards, who could get no tradition of their origin, referred them to the Phœnicians or Carthaginians. (Hist, de Yucatan, lib. 4, cap. 2.) He cites the following emphatic notice of these remains from Las Casas: “Ciertamente la tierra de Yucathan da á entender cosas mui especiales, y de mayor antiguedad, por las grandes, admirables, y excessivas maneras de edificios, y letreros de ciertos caracteres, que en otra ninguna parte se hallan.” (Loc. cit.) Even the inquisitive Martyr has collected no particulars respecting them, merely noticing the buildings of this region with general expressions of admiration. (De Insulis nuper Inventis, pp.

“Asimismo los Tultecas que escapáron se fuéron por las costas del Mar del Sur y Norte, como son Huatimala, Tecuantepec, Cuauhzacualco, Campechy, Tecolotlan, y los de las Islas y Costas de una mar y otra, que despues se viniéron á multiplicar.” Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, MS., No. 5.

Herrera, Hist, general, dec. 4, lib. 10, cap. 1-4.—Cogolludo, Hist, de Yucatan, lib. 4, cap. 5.—Pet. Martyr, De Insulis, ubi supra.—M. Waldeck comes to just the opposite inference, namely, that the inhabitants of Yucatan were the true sources of the Toltec and Aztec civilization. (Voyage en Yucatan, p. 72.) “Doubt must be our lot in everything,” exclaims the honest Captain Dupaix,—“the true faith always excepted.” Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. i. p. 21.

“Inter omnes eos non constat a quibus factæ sint, justissimo casu, obliteratis tantæ vanitatis auctoribus.” Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. 36, cap. 17.

Ante, p. 200.

At least, this is true of the etymology of these languages, and, as such, was adduced by Mr. Edward Everett, in his Lectures on the Aboriginal Civilization of America, forming part of a course delivered some years since by that acute and highly accomplished scholar.

The mixed breed, from the buffalo and the European stock, was known formerly in the northwestern counties of Virginia, says Mr. Gallatin (Synopsis, sec. 5); who is, however, mistaken in asserting that “the bison is not known to have ever been domesticated by the Indians.” (Ubi supra.) Gomara speaks of a nation, dwelling about 40° north latitude, on the northwestern borders of New Spain, whose chief wealth was in droves of these cattle (buyes con una giba sobre la cruz, “oxen with a hump on the shoulders”), from which they got their clothing, food, and drink, which last, however, appears to have been only the blood of the animal. Historia de las Indias, cap. 214, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.

The people of parts of China, for example, and, above all, of Cochin China, who never milk their cows, according to Macartney, cited by Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. iii. p. 58, note. See, also, p. 118.

The native regions of the buffalo were the vast prairies of the Missouri, and they wandered over the long reach of country east of the Rocky Mountains, from 55° north, to the headwaters of the streams between the Mississippi and the Rio del Norte. The Columbia plains, says Gallatin, were as naked of game as of trees. (Synopsis, sec. 5.) That the bison was sometimes found also on the other side of the mountains, is plain from Gomara’s statement. (Hist. de las Ind., loc. cit.) See, also, Laet, who traces their southern wanderings to the river Vaquimi (?), in the province of Cinaloa, on the California Gulf. Novus Orbis (Lugd. Bat., 1633), p. 286.

Ante, p. 155.

[And in this connection also the reader may do well to consider these words of the distinguished Americanist, D. G. Brinton, uttered in the International Congress of Anthropology in 1893: “Up to the present time there has not been shown a single dialect, not an art or an institution, not a myth or a religious rite, not a domesticated plant or animal, not a tool, weapon, game, or symbol, in use in America at the time of the discovery, which had been previously imported from Asia, or from any other continent of the Old World.”—M.]

[The grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella was not Charles the Fifth when the sceptre of Spain was thrust into his hands because his mother Joanna was unfit to rule. Charles called himself king when he made his triumphal entry into Valladolid in 1517. But it was only with the greatest difficulty that the Cortes of Castile was induced to accept him as titular sovereign in conjunction with his mother. Her name was to take precedence of his in all royal documents. Until her death in 1555, the year before her son’s abdication, Joanna was the rightful sovereign of Spain. Charles was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519, only two years after he had assumed the control of Spanish affairs. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should be known to most people only by the more important title. Charles was born in Ghent, February 24, 1500. His father was Philip the Fair, the heir of the German possessions of the house of Hapsburg, and the territories of the house of Burgundy. When the marriage of Philip and Joanna was arranged no one dreamed that their son would succeed to the crown of Spain, for Joanna’s elder brother and elder sister were both alive. Charles scarcely knew his parents. When Isabella of Castile died his father and mother went to Spain to take possession of the kingdom she had left to her daughter.

The following passage—one among many—from that faithful mirror of the times, Peter Martyr’s correspondence, does ample justice to the intemperance, avarice, and intolerable arrogance of the Flemings. The testimony is worth the more, as coming from one who, though resident in Spain, was not a Spaniard. “Crumenas auro fulcire inhiant; huic uni studio invigilant. Nec detrectat juvenis Rex. Farcit quacunque posse datur; non satiat tamen. Quæ qualisve sit gens hæc, depingere adhuc nescio. Insufflat vulgus hic in omne genus hominum non arctoum. Minores faciunt Hispanos, quam si nati essent inter eorum cloacas. Rugiunt jam Hispani, labra mordent, submurmurant taciti, fatorum vices tales esse conqueruntur, quod ipsi domitores regnorum ita floccifiant ab his, quorum Deus unicus (sub rege temperato) Bacchus est cum Citherea.” Opus Epistolarum (Amstelodami, 1610), ep. 608.

Yet the nobles were not all backward in manifesting their disgust. When Charles would have conferred the famous Burgundian order of the Golden Fleece on the Count of Benavente, that lord refused it, proudly telling him, “I am a Castilian. I desire no honors but those of my own country, in my opinion quite as good as—indeed, better than—those of any other.” Sandoval, Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Emperador Cárlos V. (Ambéres, 1681), tom. i. p. 103.

[The tone of the preceding paragraphs is that of the Spanish chroniclers of the seventeenth century, and shows how the author, despite his natural candor and impartiality of mind, had acquired insensibly the habit of considering questions that affected Spain from the national point of view of the class of writers with whom his studies had made him most familiar. Spain is called the “native country” of Charles V., and the “land of his fathers,” although, as hardly any reader will need to be reminded, he was born in the Netherlands and was of Spanish descent only on the maternal side. The term “foreigner” is applied to him as if it indicated some vicious trait in his nature; and the training which he had received as the heir to the Austro-Burgundian dominions is spoken of as erroneous, merely because it had not fitted him for a different position. His manners are contrasted with those of native Spanish sovereigns, as if wanting in graciousness and affability; yet the Spaniards, who alone ever made this complaint, recognized their own ideal of royal demeanor in that of the taciturn and phlegmatic Philip II.

I will take the liberty to refer the reader who is desirous of being more minutely acquainted with the Spanish colonial administration and the state of discovery previous to Charles V., to the “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella” (Part 2, ch. 9, 26), where the subject is treated in extenso.{*}

See the curious document attesting this, and drawn up by order of Columbus, ap. Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viages y de Descubrimientos (Madrid, 1825), tom. ii. Col. Dip., No. 76.

[Now Haiti and Santo Domingo.—M.]

The island was originally called by Columbus Juana, in honor of Prince John, heir to the Castilian crown. After his death it received the name of Fernandina, at the king’s desire. The Indian name has survived both. Herrera, Hist. general, Descrip., cap. 6.

“Erat Didacus, ut hoc in loco de eo semel tantum dicamus, veteranus miles, rei militaris gnarus, quippe qui septem et decem annos in Hispania militiam exercitus fuerat, homo probus, opibus, genere et fama clarus, honoris cupidus, pecuniæ aliquanto cupidior.” De Rebus gestis Ferdinandi Cortesii, MS.

The story is told by Las Casas in his appalling record of the cruelties of his countrymen in the New World, which charity—and common sense—may excuse us for believing the good father has greatly overcharged. Brevíssima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias (Venetia, 1643), p. 28.

[Santiago de Cuba.—M.]

Among the most ancient of these establishments we find the Havana, Puerto del Príncipe, Trinidad, St. Salvador, and Matanzas, or the Slaughter, so called from a massacre of the Spaniards there by the Indians. Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 8.

[This statement is erroneous. Prescott did not know that the Havana, or San Cristobal, whence Cordova sailed, was on the south side of Cuba. All authorities agree that the expedition sailed directly westward, that the storm did not occur until Cape San Antonio had been passed, and that the fleet sailed westward by the will of its commander. See Bancroft’s Mexico, vol. i. p. 7.—M.]

Gomara, Historia de las Indias, cap. 52, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Bernal Diaz says the word came from the vegetable yuca, and tale the name for a hillock in which it is planted. (Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 6.) M. Waldeck finds a much more plausible derivation in the Indian word Ouyouckatan, “listen to what they say.” Voyage pittoresque, p. 25.

Two navigators, Solís and Pinzon, had descried the coast as far back as 1506, according to Herrera, though they had not taken possession of it. (Hist. general, dec. 1, lib. 6, cap. 17.) It is, indeed, remarkable it should so long have eluded discovery, considering that it is but two degrees distant from Cuba.

Oviedo, General y natural Historia de las Indias, MS., lib. 33, cap. 1.—De Rebus gestis, MS.—Carta del Cabildo de Vera Cruz (July 10, 1519), MS.—Bernal Diaz denies that the original object of the expedition, in which he took part, was to procure slaves, though Velasquez had proposed it. (Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 2.) But he is contradicted in this by the other contemporary records above cited.

Itinerario de la Isola de Iuchathan, novamente ritrovata per il Signor Joan de Grijalva, per il suo Capellano, MS.—The chaplain’s word may be taken for the date, which is usually put at the eighth of April.

[The fleet left Santiago, April 8, 1518, and Cape San Antonio, May 1.—M.]

De Rebus gestis, MS.—Itinerario del Capellano, MS.

According to the Spanish authorities, the cacique was sent with these presents from the Mexican sovereign, who had received previous tidings of the approach of the Spaniards. I have followed Sahagun, who obtained his intelligence directly from the natives. Historia de la Conquista, MS., cap. 2.

Gomara has given the per and contra of this negotiation, in which gold and jewels of the value of fifteen or twenty thousand pesos de oro were exchanged for glass beads, pins, scissors, and other trinkets common in an assorted cargo for savages. Crónica, cap. 6.

Itinerario del Capellano, MS.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.

“Hombre de terrible condicion,” says Herrera, citing the good Bishop of Chiapa, “para los que le servian, i aiudaban, i que facilmente se indignaba contra aquellos.” Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 3, cap. 10.

At least, such is the testimony of Las Casas, who knew both the parties well, and had often conversed with Grijalva upon his voyage. Historia general de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 113.

Itinerario del Capellano, MS.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 113.—The most circumstantial account of Grijalva’s expedition is to be found in the Itinerary of his chaplain above quoted. The original is lost, but an indifferent Italian version was published at Venice in 1522. A copy, which belonged to Ferdinand Columbus, is still extant in the library of the great church of Seville. The book had become so exceedingly rare, however, that the historiographer Muñoz made a transcript of it with his own hand; and from his manuscript that in my possession was taken.{*}

[The house in which he was born, in the Calle de la Feria, was preserved until the present century, and many a traveller has lodged there, desirous, says Alaman, of sleeping in the mansion where the hero was born. In the year 1809 the building was destroyed by the French, and only a few fragments of wall now remain to commemorate the birthplace of the Conqueror. Alaman, Disertaciones históricas, tom. ii. p. 2.]

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 1.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 203. I find no more precise notice of the date of his birth, except, indeed, by Pizarro y Orellana, who tells us that “Cortés came into the world the same day that that infernal beast, the false heretic Luther, entered it,—by way of compensation, no doubt, since the labors of the one to pull down the true faith were counterbalanced by those of the other to maintain and extend it”! (Varones ilustres del Nuevo-Mundo (Madrid, 1639), p. 66.) But this statement of the good cavalier, which places the birth of our hero in 1483, looks rather more like a zeal for “the true faith” than for historic.

Argensola, in particular, has bestowed great pains on the prosapia of the house of Cortés; which he traces up, nothing doubting, to Narnes Cortés, king of Lombardy and Tuscany. Anales de Aragon (Zaragoza, 1630), pp. 621-625.—Also, Caro de Torres, Historia de las Ordenes militares (Madrid, 1629), fol. 103.

De Rebus gestis, MS.—Las Casas, who knew the father, bears stronger testimony to his poverty than to his noble birth. “Un escudero,” he says of him, “que yo conocí harto pobre y humilde, aunque cristiano, viejo y dizen que hidalgo.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 27.

[His parents had cast lots to decide which of the apostles should be chosen as his patron saint. The lot fell upon Peter, which explains the especial devotion which Cortés professed, through his whole life, to that saint, to whose watchful care he attributed the improvement in his health. Alaman, Disertaciones históricas, tom. ii. p. 4.]

Argensola, Anales, p. 220.—Las Casas and Bernal Diaz both state that he was Bachelor of Laws at Salamanca. (Hist. de las Indias, MS., ubi supra.—Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 203.) The degree was given probably in later life, when the University might feel a pride in claiming him among her sons.

De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 1.

De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Ibid.—Argensola states the cause of his detention concisely enough: “Suspendió el viaje, por enamorado y por quartanario.” Anales, p. 621.

Some thought it was the Holy Ghost in the form of this dove. “Sanctum esse Spiritum, qui, in illius alitis specie, ut mœstos et afflictos solaretur, venire erat dignatus” (De Rebus gestis, MS.); a conjecture which seems very reasonable to Pizarro y Orellana, since the expedition was to “redound so much to the spread of the Catholic faith, and the Castilian monarchy”! Varones ilustres, p. 70.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 2.

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 203.

De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 3, 4.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 27.

Hist. de las Indias, MS., loc. cit.—“Res omnes arduas difficilesque per Cortesium, quem in dies magis magisque amplectebatur, Velasquius agit. Ex eo ducis favore et gratia magna Cortesio invidia est orta.” De Rebus gestis, MS.

Solís has found a patent of nobility for this lady also,—“doncella noble y recatada.” (Historia de la Conquista de Méjico (Paris, 1838), lib. 1, cap. 9.) Las Casas treats her with less ceremony: “Una hermana de un Juan Xuarez, gente pobre.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 5, cap. 17.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 4.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., ubi supra.—De Rebus gestis, MS.—Memorial de Benito Martinez, Capellan de D. Velasquez, contra H. Cortés, MS.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., ubi supra.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., loc. cit.—Memorial de Martinez, MS.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 4.—Herrera tells a silly story of his being unable to swim, and throwing himself on a plank, which, after being carried out to sea, was washed ashore with him at flood tide. Hist. general, dec. 1, lib. 9, cap. 8.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 4.—“Cœnat cubatque Cortesius cum Velasquio eodem in lecto. Qui postero die fugæ Cortesii nuntius venerat, Velasquium et Cortesium juxta accubantes intuitus, miratur.” De Rebus gestis, MS.

Las Casas, who remembered Cortés at this time “so poor and lowly that he would have gladly received any favor from the least of Velasquez’ attendants,” treats the story of the bravado with contempt. “Por lo qual si él [Velasquez] sintiera de Cortés una puncta de alfiler de cerviguillo ó presuncion, ó lo ahorcara ó á lo menos lo echara de la tierra y lo sumiera en ella sin que alzara cabeza en su vida.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 27.

“Pecuariam primus quoque habuit, in insulamque induxit, omni pecorum genere ex Hispania petito.” De Rebus gestis, MS.

“Los que por sacarle el oro muriéron Dios abrá tenido mejor cuenta que yo.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 27. The text is a free translation.

“Estando conmigo, me lo dixo que estava tan contento con ella como si fuera hija de una Duquessa.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., ubi supra.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 4.

The treasurer used to boast he had passed some two-and-twenty years in the wars of Italy. He was a shrewd personage, and Las Casas, thinking that country a slippery school for morals, warned the governor, he says, more than once “to beware of the twenty-two years in Italy.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 113.

“Si él no fuera por Capitan, que no fuera la tercera parte de la gente que con él fué.” Declaracion de Puertocarrero, MS. (Coruña, 30 de Abril, 1520).

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 19.—De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 7.—Las Casas, Hist. general de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 113.

Declaracion de Puertocarrero, MS.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Probanza en la Villa Segura, MS. (4 de Oct., 1520).

The letter from the Municipality of Vera Cruz, after stating that Velasquez bore only one-third of the original expense, adds, “Y sepan Vras. Magestades que la mayor parte de la dicha tercia parte que el dicho Diego Velasquez gastó en hacer la dicha armada fué emplear sus dineros en vinos y en ropas, y en otras cosas de poco valor para nos lo vender acá en mucha mas cantidad de lo que á él le costó, por manera que podemos decir que entre nosotros los Españoles vasallos de Vras. Reales Altezas ha hecho Diego Velasquez su rescate y granosea de sus dineros cobrandolos muy bien.” (Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.) Puertocarrero and Montejo, also, in their depositions taken in Spain, both speak of Cortés’ having furnished two-thirds of the cost of the flotilla. (Declaracion de Puertocarrero, MS.—Declaracion de Montejo, MS. (29 de Abril, 1520).) The letter from Vera Cruz, however, was prepared under the eye of Cortés; and the last two were his confidential officers.

The instrument, in the original Castilian, will be found in Appendix, No. 5. It is often referred to by writers who never saw it, as the Agreement between Cortés and Velasquez. It is, in fact, only the instructions given by this latter to his officer, who was no party to it.

Declaracion de Puertocarrero, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 7.—Velasquez soon after obtained from the crown authority to colonize the new countries, with the title of adelantado over them. The instrument was dated at Barcelona, Nov. 13th, 1518. (Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 3, cap. 8.) Empty privileges! Las Casas gives a caustic etymology of the title of adelantado, so often granted to the Spanish discoverers. “Adelantados porque se adelantaran en hazer males y daños tan gravísimos á gentes pacíficas.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 117.

“Deterrebat,” says the anonymous biographer, “eum Cortesii natura imperii avida, fiducia sui ingens, et nimius sumptus in classe parand. Timere itaque Velasquius cœpit, si Cortesius cum e classe iret, nihil ad se vel honoris vel lucri rediturum.” De Rebus gestis, MS.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 19.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114.

“Cortés no avia menester mas para entendello de mirar el gesto á Diego Velasquez segun su astuta viveza y mundana sabiduría.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114.

Las Casas had the story from Cortés’ own mouth. Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 7.—De Rebus gestis, MS.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 3, cap. 12.—Solís, who follows Bernal Diaz in saying that Cortés parted openly and amicably from Velasquez, seems to consider it a great slander on the character of the former to suppose that he wanted to break with the governor so soon, when he had received so little provocation. (Conquista, lib. 1, cap. 10.) But it is not necessary to suppose that Cortés intended a rupture with his employer by this clandestine movement, but only to secure himself in the command. At all events, the text conforms in every particular to the statement of Las Casas, who, as he knew both the parties well, and resided on the island at the time, had ample means of information.{*}

Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114.

[Juan Sedeño was the richest man in the fleet. His possessions included a ship, a mare, a negro, and some cazabi bread and bacon. Bernal Diaz very properly gives a list of the horses belonging to the expedition, remarking that neither horses nor negroes could be had without great expense. (See Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 23.) A horse cost from four to five hundred pesos de oro.—M.]

[Bancroft (Mexico, i. p. 66) thinks Prescott has made a slight mistake as to these ships, and that Sedeño was the commander of the second vessel. Bancroft also will have it that the standard of Cortés was made of “taffeta,” not velvet.—M.]

Las Casas had this, also, from the lips of Cortés in later life. “Todo esto me dixo el mismo Cortés, con otras cosas cerca dello despues de Marques; ... reindo y mofando é con estas formales palabras, Á la mi fée andube por allí como un gentil cosario.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.

De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 8.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114, 115.

[But not across the island. There was no need for Cortés to sail round the westerly point of Cuba with his squadron. Havana, or San Cristóbal de la Habana, was then upon the south side of the island. The town where the Havana of to-day stands was not founded until 1519. Many writers besides Prescott, knowing nothing of this fact, have fallen into this same error. From Trinidad to the new Habana would have been a long and difficult march for Alvarado and his party, and a long and unnecessary voyage for the fleet of Cortés.—M.]

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 24.—De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 8.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.—The legend on the standard was, doubtless, suggested by that on the labarum,—the sacred banner of Constantine.

The most minute notices of the person and habits of Cortés are to be gathered from the narrative of the old cavalier Bernal Diaz, who served so long under him, and from Gomara, the general’s chaplain. See in particular the last chapter of Gomara’s Crónica, and cap. 203 of the Hist. de la Conquista.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 24.

Ibid., loc. cit.

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 26.—There is some discrepancy among authorities in regard to the numbers of the army. The Letter from Vera Cruz, which should have been exact, speaks in round terms of only four hundred soldiers. (Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.) Velasquez himself, in a communication to the Chief Judge of Hispaniola, states the number at six hundred. (Carta de Diego Velasquez al Lic. Figueroa, MS.) I have adopted the estimates of Bernal Diaz, who, in his long service, seems to have become intimately acquainted with every one of his comrades, their persons, and private history.

Incredibly dear indeed, since, from the statements contained in the depositions at Villa Segura, it appears that the cost of the horses for the expedition was from four to five hundred pesos de oro each! “Si saben que de caballos que el dicho Señor Capitan General Hernando Cortés ha comprado para servir en la dicha Conquista, que son diez é ocho, que le han costado á quatrocientos cinquenta é á quinientos pesos ha pagado, é que deve mas de ocho mil pesos de oro dellos.” (Probanza en Villa Segura, MS.) The estimation of these horses is sufficiently shown by the minute information Bernal Diaz has thought proper to give of every one of them; minute enough for the pages of a sporting calendar. See Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 23.

“Io vos propongo grandes premios, mas embueltos en grandes trabajos; pero la virtud no quiere ociosidad.” (Gomara, Crónica, cap. 9.) It is the thought so finely expressed by Thomson:

The text is a very condensed abridgment of the original speech of Cortés,—or of his chaplain, as the case may be. See it, in Gomara, Crónica, cap. 9.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 10.—De ebus gestis, MS.—“Tantus fuit armorum apparatus,” exclaims the author of the last work, “quo alterum terrarum orbem bellis Cortesius concutit; ex tam parvis opibus tantum imperium Carolo facit; aperitque omnium primus Hispanæ genti Hispaniam novam!” The author of this work is unknown. It seems to have been part of a great compilation “De Orbe Novo,” written, probably, on the plan of a series of biographical sketches, as the introduction speaks of a life of Columbus preceding this of Cortés. It was composed, as it states, while many of the old Conquerors were still surviving, and is addressed to the son of Cortés. The historian, therefore, had ample means of verifying the truth of his own statements, although they too often betray, in his partiality for his hero, the influence of the patronage under which the work was produced. It runs into a prolixity of detail which, however tedious, has its uses in a contemporary document. Unluckily, only the first book was finished, or, at least, has survived; terminating with the events of this chapter. It is written in Latin, in a pure and perspicuous style, and is conjectured with some plausibility to be the work of Calvet de Estrella, Chronicler of the Indies.

See ante, p. 241, note 27.

Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 25, et seq.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 10, 15.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 115.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 4, cap. 6.—Martyr, De Insulis nuper inventis (Coloniæ, 1574), p. 344.—While these pages were passing through the press, but not till two years after they were written, Mr. Stephens’s important and interesting volumes appeared, containing the account of his second expedition to Yucatan. In the latter part of the work he describes his visit to Cozumel, now an uninhabited island covered with impenetrable forests. Near the shore he saw the remains of ancient Indian structures, which he conceives may possibly have been the same that met the eyes of Grijalva and Cortés, and which suggest to him some important inferences. He is led into further reflections on the existence of the cross as a symbol of worship among the islanders. (Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (New York, 1843), vol. ii. chap. 20.) As the discussion of these matters would lead me too far from the track of our narrative, I shall take occasion to return to them hereafter, when I treat of the architectural remains of the country.{}{*}

See the biographical sketch of the good bishop Las Casas, the “Protector of the Indians,” in the Postscript at the close of the present Book.

“It may have been that the devil appeared to them as he is, and left these forms stamped on their imagination, so that the imitative power of the artist reveals itself in the ugliness of the image.” Solís, Conquista, p. 39.

Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 13.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 4, cap. 7.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 78.—Las Casas, whose enlightened views in religion would have done honor to the present age, insists on the futility of these forced conversions, by which it was proposed in a few days to wean men from the idolatry which they had been taught to reverence from the cradle. “The only way of doing this,” he says, “is by long, assiduous, and faithful preaching, until the heathen shall gather some ideas of the true nature of the Deity and of the doctrines they are to embrace. Above all, the lives of the Christians should be such as to exemplify the truth of these doctrines, that, seeing this, the poor Indian may glorify the Father, and acknowledge him, who has such worshippers, for the true and only God.” See the original remarks, which I quote in extenso, as a good specimen of the bishop’s style when kindled by his subject into eloquence, in Appendix, No. 6.

“Muy gran misterio y milagro de Dios.” Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.

[Not long ago, a history of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan, written in the Maya language, but in Roman letters, by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about the year 1562, was brought to light. This account, the “Chronicle of Chicxulub,” was translated by Dr. Brinton, and was published by him in the “Maya Chronicles,” Philadelphia, 1882, pp. 187-259. This chronicle, from the pen of one who was almost contemporary with the Conquest, corroborates the accounts given by the Spanish historians in most particulars. It refers to Chichen Itza and Izamal as inhabited when the Spaniards descended upon the country. It is sometimes inaccurate as to details, as in this reference to Aguilar: “Thus the land was discovered by Aguilar, who was eaten by Ah Naum Ah Pat at Cuzamil in the year 1517.” We know, of course, that it was another Spaniard who was eaten by Ah Naum Ah Pat. The matter is of small consequence to us, though undoubtedly important to Aguilar.—M.]

They are enumerated by Herrera with a minuteness which may claim at least the merit of giving a much higher notion of Aguilar’s virtue than the barren generalities of the text. (Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 4, cap. 6-8.) The story is prettily told by Washington Irving, Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus (London, 1833), p. 263, et seq.

Camargo, Historia de Tlascala, MS.—Oviedo, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 33, cap. 1.—Martyr, De Insulis, p. 347.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 29.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 115, 116.

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 31.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 18.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 118.—Martyr, De Insulis, p. 348.—There are some discrepancies between the statements of Bernal Diaz and the Letter from Vera Cruz; both by parties who were present.

Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 31.

“See,” exclaims the Bishop of Chiapa, in his caustic vein, “the reasonableness of this ‘requisition,’ or, to speak more correctly, the folly and insensibility of the Royal Council, who could find, in the refusal of the Indians to receive it, a good pretext for war.” (Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 118.) In another place he pronounces an animated invective against the iniquity of those who covered up hostilities under this empty form of words, the import of which was utterly incomprehensible to the barbarians. (Ibid., lib. 3, cap. 57.) The famous formula, used by the Spanish Conquerors on this occasion, was drawn up by Dr. Palacios Reubios, a man of letters, and a member of the King’s council. “But I laugh at him and his letters,” exclaims Oviedo, “if he thought a word of it could be comprehended by the untutored Indians!” (Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 29, cap. 7.) The regular Manifesto, requirimiento, may be found translated in the concluding pages of Irving’s “Voyages of the Companions of Columbus.”

“Halláronlas llenas de maiz é gallinas y otros vastimentos, oro ninguno, de lo que ellos no resciviéron mucho plazer.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., ubi supra.

Peter Martyr gives a glowing picture of this Indian capital. “Ad fluminis ripam protentum dicunt esse oppidum, quantum non ausim dicere: mille quingentorum passuum, ait Alaminus nauclerus, et domorum quinque ac viginti millium: stringunt alij, ingens tamen fatentur et celebre. Hortis intersecantur domus, quæ sunt egregiè lapidibus et calce fabrefactæ, maxim industri et architectorum arte.” (De Insulis, p. 349.) With his usual inquisitive spirit, he gleaned all the particulars from the old pilot Alaminos, and from two of the officers of Cortés who revisited Spain in the course of that year. Tabasco was in the neighborhood of those ruined cities of Yucatan which have lately been the theme of so much speculation. The encomiums of Martyr are not so remarkable as the apathy of other contemporary chroniclers.

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 31, 32.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 18.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 118, 119.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 78, 79.

According to Solís, who quotes the address of Cortés on the occasion, he summoned a council of his captains to advise him as to the course he should pursue. (Conquista, cap. 19.) It is possible, but I find no warrant for it anywhere.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 3, cap. 119.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 19, 20.—Herrera, Hist. gen., dec. 2, lib. 4, cap. 11.—Martyr, De Insulis, p. 350.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 79.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 33, 36.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 79.—“Cortés supposed it was his own tutelar saint, St. Peter,” says Pizarro y Orellana; “but the common and indubitable opinion is that it was our glorious apostle St. James, the bulwark and safeguard of our nation.” (Varones ilustres, p. 73.) “Sinner that I am,” exclaims honest Bernal Diaz, in a more skeptical vein, “it was not permitted to me to see either the one or the other of the Apostles on this occasion.” Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 34.{*}

It was the order—as the reader may remember—given by Cæsar to his followers in his battle with Pompey:

“Equites,” says Paolo Giovio, “unum integrum Centaurorum specie animal esse existimarent.” Elogia Virorum Illustrium (Basil, 1696), lib. 6, p. 229.

Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. iii. p. 11.

“Crean Vras. Reales Altezas por cierto, que esta batalla fué vencida mas por voluntad de Dios que por nras. fuerzas, porque para con quarenta mil hombres de guerra, poca defensa fuera quatrozientos que nosotros eramos.” (Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 20.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 35.) It is Las Casas who, regulating his mathematics, as usual, by his feelings, rates the Indian loss at the exorbitant amount cited in the text. “This,” he concludes, dryly, “was the first preaching of the gospel by Cortés in New Spain!” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 119.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 21, 22.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Martyr, De Insulis, p. 351.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., ubi supra.

“Cata Francia, Montesinos, Cata Paris la ciudad, Cata las aguas de Duero Do an á dar en la mar.”

Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 37.

Las Casas notices the significance of the Indian gestures as implying a most active imagination: “Señas é meneos con que los Yndios mucho mas que otras generaciones entienden y se dan á entender, por tener muy bivos los sentidos exteriores y tambien los interiores, mayormente que es admirable su imaginacion.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 120.

“Hermosa como Diosa,” beautiful as a goddess, says Camargo of her. (Hist. de Tlascala, MS.) A modern poet pays her charms the following not inelegant tribute:

[“Malinche” is a corruption of the Aztec word “Malintzin,” which is itself a corruption of the Spanish name “Marina.” The Aztecs, having no r in their alphabet, substituted l for it, while the termination tzin was added in token of respect, so that the name was equivalent to Doña or Lady Marina. Conquista de Méjico (trad. de Vega, anotada por D. Lúcas Alaman), tom. ii. pp. 17, 269.]

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 120.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 25, 26.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. iii. pp. 12-14.—Oviedo, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 33, cap. 1.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 79.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 37, 38.—There is some discordance in the notices of the early life of Marina. I have followed Bernal Diaz,—from his means of observation, the best authority. There is happily no difference in the estimate of her singular merits and services.

The name of the Aztec monarch, like those of most persons and places in New Spain, has been twisted into all possible varieties of orthography. Cortés, in his letters, calls him “Muteczuma.” Modern Spanish historians usually spell his name “Motezuma.” I have preferred to conform to the name by which he is usually known to English readers. It is the one adopted by Bernal Diaz, and by most writers near the time of the Conquest. Alaman, Disertaciones históricas, tom. i., apénd. 2.

Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 79.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. iii. p. 16.—New Vera Cruz, as the present town is called, is distinct, as we shall see hereafter, from that established by Cortés, and was not founded till the close of the sixteenth century, by the Conde de Monterey, Viceroy of Mexico. It received its privileges as a city from Philip III. in 1615. Ibid., tom. iii. p. 30, nota.

The epidemic of the matlazahuatl, so fatal to the Aztecs, is shown by M. de Humboldt to have been essentially different from the vómito, or bilious fever of our day. Indeed, this disease is not noticed by the early conquerors and colonists, and, Clavigero asserts, was not known in Mexico till 1725. (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 117, nota.) Humboldt, however, arguing that the same physical causes must have produced similar results, carries the disease back to a much higher antiquity, of which he discerns some traditional and historic vestiges. “Il ne faut pas confondre l’epoque,” he remarks, with his usual penetration, “à laquelle une maladie a été décrite pour la première fois, parce qu’elle a fait de grands ravages dans un court espace de temps, avec l’époque de sa première apparition.” Essai politique, tom. iv. p. 161 et seq., and 179.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 26.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 119.

[According to a curious document published by Icazbalceta (Col. de Doc. para la Hist. de México, tom. ii.), two of the principal caciques present on this occasion communicated secretly with Cortés, and, declaring themselves disaffected subjects of Montezuma, offered to facilitate the advance of the Spaniards by furnishing the general with paintings in which the various features of the country would be correctly delineated. The offer was accepted, and on the next visit the paintings were produced, and proved subsequently of great service to Cortés, who rewarded the donors with certain grants. But the genuineness of this paper, though supported by so distinguished a scholar as Señor Ramirez, is more than questionable.—K.]

Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, MS., No. 13.—Idem, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 79.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 25, 26.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 38.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 5, cap. 4.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 13-15.—Tezozomoc, Crón. Mexicana, MS., cap. 107.

FOOTNOTES:

Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, ubi supra.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 9, cap. 25.—Gomara, Crón., ap. Barcia, ubi supra.—Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 14, 17.

[In reading this chapter we must constantly bear in mind the fact that it is founded almost entirely upon traditions. We must also remember—first, that Ixtlilxochitl is the principal authority for the legends therein chronicled; second, that Ixtlilxochitl possessed a very fertile imagination; third, that Ixtlilxochitl’s “Historia Chichimeca” was not written from an entirely unprejudiced point of view. To use the words of Bandelier (Archæological Tour in Mexico, p. 192): “Ixtlilxochitl is always a very suspicious authority, not because he is more confused than any other Indian writer, but because he wrote for an interested object, and with the view of sustaining tribal claims in the eyes of the Spanish government.”—M.]