México á traves de los Siglos , (Mexico, Through the Centuries), a history of Mexico in five large quarto volumes. Each of these volumes dealt with a distinct epoch of Mexican history and was written by a specialist. Chavero’s volume treated Prehistoric Mexico in a masterly fashion. In biography Chavero’s lives of Sahagun , Siguenza , and Boturini deal with Spanish-Mexicans, his Itzcoatl and Montezuma with natives. He has edited, with scholarly annotation, the works of Ixtlilxochitl and Muñoz Camargo’s Historia de Tlaxcala .
But Alfredo Chavero has also written in the field of dramatic literature, some of his plays having been well received. Xochitl, Quetzalcoatl and Los Amores de Alarcon (The Loves of Alarcon) are among the best known. In Xochitl and Quetzalcoatl, the romantic events of the days of the Conquest and the life of the Indians, furnish his material. In all his writing, Chavero is simple, direct, and strong; his style is graceful and his treatment interesting.
Our quotations are drawn from México á traves de los Siglos and Xochitl.
THE CHRONICLERS.
Still, among the first writers of the colonial epoch we shall encounter some authentic material regarding the ancient Indians. Some chroniclers based their narratives upon hieroglyphs, which they did not limit themselves to interpreting, but which also served them as a foundation for more extended records; contemporaries of the Conquest, they had heard from the conquered themselves, their traditional history. Others, without availing themselves of the assistance of the paintings, simply recorded the traditions in their works—and we must remember that, on account of the inadequacy of their hieroglyphic writing, the Mexicans were ever accustomed to carry the glorious deeds of their race in memory, which they taught their children, in song and story, that they might not be forgotten. Without doubt, the first works of the chroniclers suffered