“As soon as they had finished eating, they went forth and the water was tranquil; for the log did not move any more; and opening it they saw many fish.
“Then they built a fire, rubbing together pieces of wood, and they roasted fish. The gods Citlallinicuc and Citlallatonac, looking below, exclaimed: ‘Divine Lord, what means that fire below? Why do they thus smoke the heavens?’
“Straightway descended Titlacahuan Tezcatlipocâ and commenced to scold, saying: ‘What is this fire doing here?’ And seizing the fishes he moulded their hinder parts and changed their heads, and they were at once transformed into dogs.”26
THE “COXCOX” FALLACY
It is unnecessary in this place to deal at any length with the quite artificial myth given by Siguenza and Clavigero, based on a mistaken interpretation of certain Mexican paintings.
Briefly, they state that Coxcox, “the Mexican Noah,” and his spouse Xochiquetzal escaped from the deluge in a boat which grounded on the peak of Colhuacan: “the Ararat of Mexico.”
Dumb children were born to them, who received innumerable languages from a polyglot dove.
Garcia y Cubas published in his Atlas Geografico a letter from Ramirez (April 1858) in which the then conservator of the National Museum of Mexico showed the fallacy of Siguenza’s interpretation and proved that the pictures in question referred to the wanderings of the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico.
A flood myth which has for its hero one of the giants who were supposed to inhabit the earth in the first age (or rather the first age according to the