Chapter 5

In Babylonia, China, and Mexico the caste at the bottom of the social scale lived upon floating islands of reeds or rafts, covered with earth, on the lakes and rivers.

In Peru and Babylonia marriages were made but once a year, at a public festival.

Among the Romans, the Chinese, the Abyssinians, and the Indians of Canada the singular custom prevails of lifting the bride over the door-step of her husband's home. (Sir John Lubbock, "Smith. Rep.," 1869, p. 352.)

"The bride-cake which so invariably accompanies a wedding among ourselves, and which must always be cut by the bride, may be traced back to the old Roman form of marriage by 'conferreatio,' or eating together. So, also, among the Iroquois the bride and bridegroom used to partake together of a cake of sagamite, which the bride always offered to her husband." (Ibid.)

Among many American tribes, notably in Brazil, the husband captured the wife by main force, as the men of Benjamin carried off the daughters of Shiloh at the feast, and as the Romans captured the Sabine women. "Within a few generations the same old habit was kept up in Wales, where the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off the bride; and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride's people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt, except now and then by accident—as happened when one Lord Hoath lost an eye, which mischance put an end to this curious relic of antiquity." (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 409.)

Marriage in Mexico was performed by the priest. He exhorted them to maintain peace and harmony, and tied the end of the man's mantle to the dress of the woman; he perfumed them, and placed on each a shawl on which was painted a skeleton, "as a symbol that only death could now separate them from one another." (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 379.)

The priesthood was thoroughly organized in Mexico and Peru. They were prophets as well as priests. "They brought the newly-born infant into the religious society; they directed their training and education; they determined the entrance of the young men into the service of the state; they consecrated marriage by their blessing; they comforted the sick and assisted the dying." (Ibid., p. 374.) There were five thousand priests in the temples of Mexico. They confessed and absolved the sinners, arranged the festivals, and managed the choirs in the churches. They lived in conventual discipline, but were allowed to marry; they practised flagellation and fasting, and prayed at regular hours. There were great preachers and exhorters among them. There were also convents into which females were admitted. The novice had her hair cut off and took vows of celibacy; they lived holy and pious lives. (Ibid., pp. 375, 376.) The king was the high-priest of the religious orders. A new king ascended the temple naked, except his girdle; he was sprinkled four times with water which had been blessed; he was then clothed in a mantle, and on his knees took an oath to maintain the ancient religion. The priests then instructed him in his royal duties. (Ibid., p. 378.) Besides the regular priesthood there were monks who were confined in cloisters. (Ibid., p. 390.) Cortes says the Mexican priests were very strict in the practice of honesty and chastity, and any deviation was punished with death. They wore long white robes and burned incense. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 379.) The first fruits of the earth were devoted to the support of the priesthood. (Ibid., p. 383.) The priests of the Isthmus were sworn to perpetual chastity.

The American doctors practised phlebotomy. They bled the sick man because they believed the evil spirit which afflicted him would come away with the blood. In Europe phlebotomy only continued to a late period, but the original superstition out of which it arose, in this case as in many others, was forgotten.

There is opportunity here for the philosopher to meditate upon the perversity of human nature and the persistence of hereditary error. The superstition of one age becomes the science of another; men were first bled to withdraw the evil spirit, then to cure the disease; and a practice whose origin is lost in the night of ages is continued into the midst of civilization, and only overthrown after it has sent millions of human beings to untimely graves. Dr. Sangrado could have found the explanation of his profession only among the red men of America.

Folk-lore.—Says Max Müller: "Not only do we find the same words and the same terminations in Sanscrit and Gothic; not only do we find the same name for Zeus in Sanscrit, Latin, and German; not only is the abstract name for God the same in India, Greece, and Italy; but these very stories, these 'Mährchen' which nurses still tell, with almost the same words, in the Thuringian forest and in the Norwegian villages, and to which crowds of children listen under the Pippal-trees of India—these stories, too, belonged to the common heirloom of the Indo-European race, and their origin carries us back to the same distant past, when no Greek had set foot in Europe, no Hindoo had bathed in the sacred waters of the Ganges."

And we find that an identity of origin can be established between the folk-lore or fairy tales of America and those of the Old World, precisely such as exists between the, legends of Norway and India.

Mr. Tylor tells us the story of the two brothers in Central America who, starting on their dangerous journey to the land of Xibalba, where their father had perished, plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother's house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead. Exactly the same conception occurs in Grimm's "Mährchen," when the two gold-children wish to see the world and to leave their father; and when their father is sad, and asks them how he shall bear news of them, they tell him, "We leave you the two golden lilies; from these you can see how we fare. If they are fresh, we are well; if they fade, we are ill; if they fall, we are dead." Grimm traces the same idea in Hindoo stories. "Now this," says Max Müller, "is strange enough, and its occurrence in India, Germany, and Central America is stranger still."

Compare the following stories, which we print in parallel columns, one from the Ojibbeway Indians, the other from Ireland:

Compare the following stories:

If the legend of Cadmus recovering Europa, after she has been carried away by the white bull, the spotless cloud, means that "the sun must journey westward until he sees again the beautiful tints which greeted his eyes in the morning," it is curious to find a story current in North America to the effect that a man once had a beautiful daughter, 'whom he forbade to leave the lodge lest she should be carried off by the king of the buffaloes; and that as she sat, notwithstanding, outside the house combing her hair, "all of a sudden the king of the buffaloes came dashing on, with his herd of followers, and, taking her between his horns, away be cantered over plains, plunged into a river which bounded his land, and carried her safely to his lodge on the other side," whence she was finally recovered by her father.

Games.—The same games and sports extended from India to the shores of Lake Superior. The game of the Hindoos, called pachisi, is played upon a cross-shaped board or cloth; it is a combination of checkers and draughts, with the throwing of dice, the dice determining the number of moves; when the Spaniards entered Mexico they found the Aztecs playing a game called patolli, identical with the Hindoo pachisi, on a similar cross-shaped board. The game of ball, which the Indians of America were in the habit of playing at the time of the discovery of the country, from California to the Atlantic, was identical with the European chueca, crosse, or hockey.

One may well pause, after reading this catalogue, and ask himself, wherein do these peoples differ? It is absurd to pretend that all these similarities could have been the result of accidental coincidences.

These two peoples, separated by the great ocean, were baptized alike in infancy with blessed water; they prayed alike to the gods; they worshipped together the sun, moon, and stars; they confessed their sins alike; they were instructed alike by an established priesthood; they were married in the same way and by the joining of hands; they armed themselves with the same weapons; when children came, the man, on both continents, went to bed and left his wife to do the honors of the household; they tattooed and painted themselves in the same fashion; they became intoxicated on kindred drinks; their dresses were alike; they cooked in the same manner; they used the same metals; they employed the same exorcisms and bleedings for disease; they believed alike in ghosts, demons, and fairies; they listened to the same stories; they played the same games; they used the same musical instruments; they danced the same dances, and when they died they were embalmed in the same way and buried sitting; while over them were erected, on both continents, the same mounds, pyramids, obelisks, and temples. And yet we are asked to believe that there was no relationship between them, and that they had never had any ante-Columbian intercourse with each other.

If our knowledge of Atlantis was more thorough, it would no doubt appear that, in every instance wherein the people of Europe accord with the people of America, they were both in accord with the people of Atlantis; and that Atlantis was the common centre from which both peoples derived their arts, sciences, customs, and opinions. It will be seen that in every case where Plato gives us any information in this respect as to Atlantis, we find this agreement to exist. It existed in architecture, sculpture, navigation, engraving, writing, an established priesthood, the mode of worship, agriculture, the construction of roads and canals; and it is reasonable to suppose that the same correspondence extended down to all the minor details treated of in this chapter.

1. ON the monuments of Central America there are representations of bearded men. How could the beardless American Indians have imagined a bearded race?

2. All the traditions of the civilized races of Central America point to an Eastern origin.

The leader and civilizer of the Nahua family was Quetzalcoatl. This is the legend respecting him:

"From the distant East, from the fabulous Hue Hue Tlapalan, this mysterious person came to Tula, and became the patron god and high-priest of the ancestors of the Toltecs. He is described as having been a white man, with strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes, and flowing beard. He wore a mitre on his head, and was dressed in a long white robe reaching to his feet, and covered with red crosses. In his hand he held a sickle. His habits were ascetic, he never married, was most chaste and pure in life, and is said to have endured penance in a neighboring mountain, not for its effects upon himself, but as a warning to others. He condemned sacrifices, except of fruits and flowers, and was known as the god of peace; for, when addressed on the subject of war, he is reported to have stopped his ears with his fingers." ("North Amer. of Antiq.," p. 268.)

"He was skilled in many arts: he invented" (that is, imported) "gem-cutting and metal-casting; he originated letters, and invented the Mexican calendar. He finally returned to the land in the East from which he came: leaving the American coast at Vera Cruz, he embarked in a canoe made of serpent-skins, and 'sailed away into the east.'" (Ibid., p. 271.)

Dr. Le Plongeon says of the columns at Chichen:

"The base is formed by the head of Cukulcan, the shaft of the body of the serpent, with its feathers beautifully carved to the very chapiter. On the chapiters of the columns that support the portico, at the entrance of the castle in Chichen Itza, may be seen the carved figures of long-bearded men, with upraised hands, in the act of worshipping sacred trees. They forcibly recall to mind the same worship in Assyria."

In the accompanying cut of an ancient vase from Tula, we see a bearded figure grasping a beardless man.

In the cut given below we see a face that might be duplicated among the old men of any part of Europe.

The Cakchiquel MS. says: "Four persons came from Tulan, from the direction of the rising sun—that is one Tulan. There is another Tulan in Xibalbay, and another where the sun sets, and it is there that we came; and in the direction of the setting sun there is another, where is the god; so that there are four Tulans; and it is where the sun sets that we came to Tulan, from the other side of the sea, where this Tulan is; and it is there that we were conceived and begotten by our mothers and fathers."

That is to say, the birthplace of the race was in the East, across the sea, at a place called Tulan and when they emigrated they called their first stopping-place on the American continent Tulan also; and besides this there were two other Tulans.

"Of the Nahua predecessors of the Toltecs in Mexico the Olmecs and Xicalaucans were the most important. They were the forerunners of the great races that followed. According to Ixtlilxochitl, these people—which are conceded to be the ones who occupied the world in the third age; they came from the East in ships or barks to the land of Potonchan, which they commenced to populate."

3. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in one of the notes of the Introduction of the "Popol Vuh," presents a very remarkable analogy between the kingdom of Xibalba, described in that work, and Atlantis. He says:

"Both countries are magnificent, exceedingly fertile, and abound in the precious metals. The empire of Atlantis was divided into ten kingdoms, governed by five couples of twin sons of Poseidon, the eldest being supreme over the others; and the ten constituted a tribunal that managed the affairs of the empire. Their descendants governed after them. The ten kings of Xibalba, who reigned (in couples) under Hun-Came and Vukub-Came (and who together constituted a grand council of the kingdom), certainly furnish curious points of comparison. And there is wanting neither a catastrophe—for Xibalba had a terrific inundation—nor the name of Atlas, of which the etymology is found only in the Nahuatl tongue: it comes from atl, water; and we know that a city of Atlan (near the water) still existed on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama at the time of the Conquest."

"In Yucatan the traditions all point to an Eastern and foreign origin for the race. The early writers report that the natives believe their ancestors to have crossed the sea by a passage which was opened for them." (Landa's "Relacion," p. 28.)

"It was also believed that part of the population came into the country from the West. Lizana says that the smaller portion, 'the little descent,' came from the East, while the greater portion, 'the great descent,' came from the West. Cogolluda considers the Eastern colony to have been the larger…. The culture-hero Zamna, the author of all civilization in Yucatan, is described as the teacher of letters, and the leader of the people from their ancient home…. He was the leader of a colony from the East." ("North Amer. of Antiq.," p. 229.)

The ancient Mexican legends say that, after the Flood, Coxcox and his wife, after wandering one hundred and four years, landed at Antlan, and passed thence to Capultepec, and thence to Culhuacan, and lastly to Mexico.

Coming from Atlantis, they named their first landing-place Antlan.

All the races that settled Mexico, we are told, traced their origin back to an Aztlan (Atlan-tis). Duran describes Aztlan as "a most attractive land." ("North Amer. of Antiq.," p. 257.)

Samé, the great name of Brazilian legend, came across the ocean from the rising sun. He had power over the elements and tempests; the trees of the forests would recede to make room for him (cutting down the trees); the animals used to crouch before him (domesticated animals); lakes and rivers became solid for him (boats and bridges); and he taught the use of agriculture and magic. Like him, Bochica, the great law-giver of the Muyscas, and son of the sun—he who invented for them the calendar and regulated their festivals—had a white beard, a detail in which all the American culture-heroes agree. The "Samé" of Brazil was probably the "Zamna" of Yucatan.

4. We find in America numerous representations of the elephant. We are forced to one of two conclusions: either the monuments date back to the time of the mammoth in North America, or these people held intercourse at some time in the past with races who possessed the elephant, and from whom they obtained pictures of that singular animal. Plato tells us that the Atlanteans possessed great numbers of elephants.

There are in Wisconsin a number of mounds of earth representing different animals—men, birds, and quadrupeds.

Among the latter is a mound representing an elephant, "so perfect in its proportions, and complete in its representation of an elephant, that its builders must have been well acquainted with all the physical characteristics of the animal which they delineated." We copy the representation of this mound on page 168.

On a farm in Louisa County, Iowa, a pipe was ploughed up which also represents an elephant. We are indebted to the valuable work of John T. Short ("The North Americans of Antiquity," p. 530) for a picture of this singular object. It was found in a section where the ancient mounds were very abundant and rich in relics. The pipe is of sandstone, of the ordinary Mound-Builder's type, and has every appearance of age and usage. There can be no doubt of its genuineness. The finder had no conception of its archæological value.

In the ruined city of Palenque we find, in one of the palaces, a stucco bass-relief of a priest. His elaborate head-dress or helmet represents very faithfully the head of an elephant. The cut on page 169 is from a drawing made by Waldeck.

The decoration known as "elephant-trunks" is found in many parts of the ancient ruins of Central America, projecting from above the door-ways of the buildings.

In Tylor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind," p. 313, I find a remarkable representation of an elephant, taken from an ancient Mexican manuscript. It is as follows:

1. Lenormant insists that the human race issued from Ups Merou, and adds that some Greek traditions point to "this locality—particularly the expression me'ropes a?'nðwpoi, which can only mean 'the men sprung from Merou.'" ("Mannal," p. 21.)

Theopompus tells us that the people who inhabited Atlantis were theMeropes, the people of Merou.

2. Whence comes the word Atlantic? The dictionaries tell us that the ocean is named after the mountains of Atlas; but whence did the Atlas mountains get their name?

"The words Atlas and Atlantic have no satisfactory etymology in any language known to Europe. They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known language of the Old World. But in the Nahuatl language we find immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, "Vocab. en lengua Mexicana y Castellana.") From this comes a series of words, such as atlan—on the border of or amid the water—from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaça, to combat, or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien. With a good harbor, it is now reduced to an unimportant pueblo named Acla." (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 179.)

Plato tells us that Atlantis and the Atlantic Ocean were named afterAtlas, the eldest son of Poseidon, the founder of the kingdom.

3. Upon that part of the African continent nearest to the site of Atlantis we find a chain of mountains, known from the most ancient times as the Atlas Mountains. Whence this name Atlas, if it be not from the name of the great king of Atlantis? And if this be not its origin, how comes it that we find it in the most north-western corner of Africa? And how does it happen that in the time of Herodotus there dwelt near this mountain-chain a people called the Atlantes, probably a remnant of a colony from Solon's island? How comes it that the people of the Barbary States were known to the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians as the "Atlantes," this name being especially applied to the inhabitants of Fezzan and Bilma? Where did they get the name from? There is no etymology for it east of the Atlantic Ocean. (Lenormants "Anc. Hist. of the East," p. 253.)

Look at it! An "Atlas" mountain on the shore of Africa; an "Atlan" town on the shore of America; the "Atlantes" living along the north and west coast of Africa; an Aztec people from Aztlan, in Central America; an ocean rolling between the two worlds called the "Atlantic;" a mythological deity called "Atlas" holding the world on his shoulders; and an immemorial tradition of an island of Atlantis. Can all these things be the result of accident?

4. Plato says that there was a "passage west from Atlantis to the rest of the islands, as well as from these islands to the whole opposite continent that surrounds that real sea." He calls it a real sea, as contradistinguished from the Mediterranean, which, as he says, is not a real sea (or ocean) but a landlocked body of water, like a harbor.

Now, Plato might have created Atlantis out of his imagination; but how could he have invented the islands beyond (the West India Islands), and the whole continent (America) enclosing that real sea? If we look at the map, we see that the continent of America does "surround" the ocean in a great half-circle. Could Plato have guessed all this? If there had been no Atlantis, and no series of voyages from it that revealed the half-circle of the continent from Newfoundland to Cape St. Roche, how could Plato have guessed it? And how could he have known that the Mediterranean was only a harbor compared with the magnitude of the great ocean surrounding Atlantis? Long sea-voyages were necessary to establish that fact, and the Greeks, who kept close to the shores in their short journeys, did not make such voyages.

5. How can we, without Atlantis, explain the presence of the Basques in Europe, who have no lingual affinities with any other race on the continent of Europe, but whose language is similar to the languages of America?

Plato tells us that the dominion of Gadeirus, one of the kings of Atlantis, extended "toward the pillars of Heracles (Hercules) as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades in that part of the world." Gades is the Cadiz of today, and the dominion of Gadeirus embraced the land of the Iberians or Basques, their chief city taking its name from a king of Atlantis, and they themselves being Atlanteans.

Dr. Farrar, referring to the Basque language, says:

"What is certain about it is, that its structure is polysynthetic, like the languages of America. Like them, it forms its compounds by the elimination of certain radicals in the simple words; so that ilhun, the twilight, is contracted from hill, dead, and egun, day; and belhaur, the knee, from belhar, front, and oin, leg…. The fact is indisputable, and is eminently noteworthy, that while the affinities of the Basque roots have never been conclusively elucidated, there has never been any doubt that this isolated language, preserving its identity in a western corner of Europe, between two mighty kingdoms, resembles, in its grammatical structure, the aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent (America), and those alone." ("Families of Speech," p. 132.)

If there was an Atlantis, forming, with its connecting ridges, a continuous bridge of land from America to Africa, we can understand how the Basques could have passed from one continent to another; but if the wide Atlantic rolled at all times unbroken between the two continents, it is difficult to conceive of such an emigration by an uncivilized people.

6. Without Atlantis, how can we explain the fact that the early Egyptians were depicted by themselves as red men on their own monuments? And, on the other hand, how can we account for the representations of negroes on the monuments of Central America?

Dêsirè Charnay, now engaged in exploring those monuments, has published in the North American Review for December, 1880, photographs of a number of idols exhumed at San Juan de Teotihuacan, from which I select the following strikingly negroid faces:

Dr. Le Plongeon says:

"Besides the sculptures of long-bearded men seen by the explorer at Chichen Itza, there were tall figures of people with small heads, thick lips, and curly short hair or wool, regarded as negroes. 'We always see them as standard or parasol bearers, but never engaged in actual warfare.'" ("Maya Archæology," p. 62.)

The following cut is from the court of the Palace of Palenque, figured by Stephens. The face is strongly Ethiopian.

The figure below represents a gigantic granite head, found near the volcano of Tuxtla, in the Mexican State of Vera Cruz, at Caxapa. The features are unmistakably negroid.

As the negroes have never been a sea-going race, the presence of these faces among the antiquities of Central America proves one of two things, either the existence of a land connection between America and Africa via Atlantis, as revealed by the deep-sea soundings of the Challenger, or commercial relations between America and Africa through the ships of the Atlanteans or some other civilized race, whereby the negroes were brought to America as slaves at a very remote epoch.

And we find some corroboration of the latter theory in that singular book of the Quiches, the "Popol Vuh," in which, after describing the creation of the first men "in the region of the rising sun" (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 548), and enumerating their first generations, we are told, "All seem to have spoken one language, and to have lived in great peace, black men and white together. Here they awaited the rising of the sun, and prayed to the Heart of Heaven." (Bancroft's "Native Races," p. 547.) How did the red men of Central America know anything about "black men and white men?" The conclusion seems inevitable that these legends of a primitive, peaceful, and happy land, an Aztlan in the East, inhabited by black and white men, to which all the civilized nations of America traced their origin, could only refer to Atlantis—that bridge of land where the white, dark, and red races met. The "Popol Vuh" proceeds to tell how this first home of the race became over-populous, and how the people under Balam-Quitze migrated; how their language became "confounded," in other words, broken up into dialects, in consequence of separation; and how some of the people "went to the East, and many came hither to Guatemala." (Ibid., p. 547.)

M. A. de Quatrefages ("Human Species," p. 200) says, "Black populations have been found in America in very small numbers only, as isolated tribes in the midst of very different populations. Such are the Charruas, of Brazil, the Black Carribees of Saint Vincent, in the Gulf of Mexico; the Jamassi of Florida, and the dark-complexioned Californians…. Such, again, is the tribe that Balboa saw some representatives of in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 1513; … they were true negroes."

7. How comes it that all the civilizations of the Old World radiate from the shores of the Mediterranean? The Mediterranean is a cul de sac, with Atlantis opposite its mouth. Every civilization on its shores possesses traditions that point to Atlantis. We hear of no civilization coming to the Mediterranean from Asia, Africa, or Europe—from north, south, or west; but north, south, east, and west we find civilization radiating from the Mediterranean to other lands. We see the Aryans descending upon Hindostan from the direction of the Mediterranean; and we find the Chinese borrowing inventions from Hindostan, and claiming descent from a region not far from the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean has been the centre of the modern world, because it lay in the path of the extension of an older civilization, whose ships colonized its shores, as they did also the shores of America. Plato says, "the nations are gathered around the shores of the Mediterranean like frogs around a marsh."

Dr. McCausland says:

"The obvious conclusion from these facts is, that at some time previous to these migrations a people speaking a language of a superior and complicated structure broke up their society, and, under some strong impulse, poured out in different directions, and gradually established themselves in all the lands now inhabited by the Caucasian race. Their territories extend from the Atlantic to the Ganges, and from Iceland to Ceylon, and are bordered on the north and east by the Asiatic Mongols, and on the south by the negro tribes of Central Africa. They present all the appearances of a later race, expanding itself between and into the territories of two pre-existing neighboring races, and forcibly appropriating the room required for its increasing population." (McCausland's "Adam and the Adamites," p. 280.)

Modern civilization is Atlantean. Without the thousands of years of development which were had in Atlantis modern civilization could not have existed. The inventive faculty of the present age is taking up the great delegated work of creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago.

8. How are we to explain the existence of the Semitic race in Europe without Atlantis? It is an intrusive race; a race colonized on sea-coasts. Where are its Old World affinities?

9. Why is it that the origin of wheat, barley, oats, maize, and rye—the essential plants of civilization—is totally lost in the mists of a vast antiquity? We have in the Greek mythology legends of the introduction of most of these by Atlantean kings or gods into Europe; but no European nation claims to have discovered or developed them, and it has been impossible to trace them to their wild originals. Out of the whole flora of the world mankind in the last seven thousand years has not developed a single food-plant to compare in importance to the human family with these. If a wise and scientific nation should propose nowadays to add to this list, it would have to form great botanical gardens, and, by systematic and long-continued experiments, develop useful plants from the humble productions of the field and forest. Was this done in the past on the island of Atlantis?

10. Why is it that we find in Ptolemy's "Geography of Asia Minor," in a list of cities in Armenia Major in A.D. 140, the names of five cities which have their counterparts in the names of localities in Central America?

(Short's "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 497.)

11. How comes it that the sandals upon the feet of the statue of Chacmol, discovered at Chichen Itza, are "exact representations of those found on the feet of the Guanches, the early inhabitants of the Canary Islands, whose mummies are occasionally discovered in the caves of Teneriffe?" Dr. Merritt deems the axe or chisel heads dug up at Chiriqui, Central America, "almost identical in form as well as material with specimens found in Suffolk County, England." (Bancroft's Native Races," vol. iv., p. 20.) The rock-carvings of Chiriqui are pronounced by Mr. Seemann to have a striking resemblance to the ancient incised characters found on the rocks of Northumberland, England. (Ibid.)

"Some stones have recently been discovered in Hierro and Las Palmas (Canary Islands), bearing sculptured symbols similar to those found on the shores of Lake Superior; and this has led M. Bertholet, the historiographer of the Canary Islands, to conclude that the first inhabitants of the Canaries and those of the great West were one in race." (Benjamin, "The Atlantic Islands," p. 130.)

12. How comes it that that very high authority, Professor Retzius ("Smithsonian Report," 1859, p. 266), declares, "With regard to the primitive dolichocephalæ of America I entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are nearly related to the Guanches in the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, etc., which Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian-Atlantidæ. We find one and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the African coast, and in the Carib Islands, on the opposite coast, which faces Africa. The color of the skin on both sides of the Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a reddish-brown."

13. The Barbarians who are alluded to by Homer and Thucydides were a race of ancient navigators and pirates called Cares, or Carians, who occupied the isles of Greece before the Pelasgi, and antedated the Phoenicians in the control of the sea. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg claims that these Carians were identical with the Caribs of the West Indies, the Caras of Honduras, and the Gurani of South America. (Landa's "Relacion," pp. 52-65.)

14. When we consider it closely, one of the most extraordinary customs ever known to mankind is that to which I have already alluded in a preceding chapter, to wit, the embalming of the body of the dead man, with a purpose that the body itself may live again in a future state. To arrive at this practice several things must coexist:

a. The people must be highly religious, and possessed of an organized and influential priesthood, to perpetuate so troublesome a custom from age to age.

b. They must believe implicitly in the immortality of the soul; and this implies a belief in rewards and punishments after death; in a heaven and a hell.

c. They must believe in the immortality of the body, and its resurrection from the grave on some day of judgment in the distant future.

d. But a belief in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body is not enough, for all Christian nations hold to these beliefs; they must supplement these with a determination that the body shall not perish; that the very flesh and blood in which the man died shall rise with him on the last day, and not a merely spiritual body.

Now all these four things must coexist before a people proceed to embalm their dead for religious purposes. The probability that all these four things should coexist by accident in several widely separated races is slight indeed. The doctrine of chances is all against it. There is here no common necessity driving men to the same expedient, with which so many resemblances have been explained; the practice is a religious ceremony, growing out of religious beliefs by no means common or universal, to wit, that the man who is dead shall live again, and live again in the very body in which he died. Not even all the Jews believed in these things.

If, then, it should appear that among the races which we claim were descended from Atlantis this practice of embalming the dead is found, and nowhere else, we have certainly furnished evidence which can only be explained by admitting the existence of Atlantis, and of some great religious race dwelling on Atlantis, who believed in the immortality of soul and body, and who embalmed their dead. We find, as I have shown:

First. That the Guanches of the Canary Islands, supposed to be a remnant of the Atlantean population, preserved their dead as mummies.

Second. That the Egyptians, the oldest colony of Atlantis, embalmed their dead in such vast multitudes that they are now exported by the ton to England, and ground up into manures to grow English turnips.

Third. That the Assyrians, the Ethiopians, the Persians, the Greeks, and even the Romans embalmed their dead.

Fourth. On the American continents we find that the Peruvians, the Central Americans, the Mexicans, and some of the Indian tribes, followed the same practice.

Is it possible to account for this singular custom, reaching through a belt of nations, and completely around the habitable world, without Atlantis?

15. All the traditions of the Mediterranean races look to the ocean as the source of men and gods. Homer sings of

"Ocean, the origin of gods and Mother Tethys."

Orpheus says, "The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he espoused his sister Tethys, who was his mothers daughter." (Plato's "Dialogues," Cratylus, p. 402.) The ancients always alluded to the ocean as a river encircling the earth, as in the map of Cosmos (see page 95 ante); probably a reminiscence of the great canal described by Plato which surrounded the plain of Atlantis. Homer (Iliad, book xviii.) describes Tethys, "the mother goddess," coming to Achilles "from the deep abysses of the main:"

"The circling Nereids with their mistress weep,And all the sea-green sisters of the deep."

Plato surrounds the great statue of Poseidon in Atlantis with the images of one hundred Nereids.

16. In the Deluge legends of the Hindoos (as given on page 87 ante), we have seen Mann saving a small fish, which subsequently grew to a great size, and warned him of the coming of the Flood. In this legend all the indications point to an ocean as the scene of the catastrophe. It says: "At the close of the last calpa there was a general destruction, caused by the sleep of Brahma, whence his creatures, in different worlds, were drowned in a vast ocean…. A holy king, named Satyavrata, then reigned, a servant of the spirit which moved on the waves" (Poseidon?), "and so devout that water was his only sustenance…. In seven days the three worlds" (remember Poseidon's trident) "shall be plunged in an ocean of death."… "'Thou shalt enter the spacious ark, and continue in it secure from the Flood on one immense ocean.'… The sea overwhelmed its shores, deluged the whole earth, augmented by showers from immense clouds." ("Asiatic Researches," vol. i., p. 230.)

All this reminds us of "the fountains of the great deep and the flood-gates of heaven," and seems to repeat precisely the story of Plato as to the sinking of Atlantis in the ocean.

17. While I do not attach much weight to verbal similarities in the languages of the two continents, nevertheless there are some that are very remarkable. We have seen the Pan and Maia of the Greeks reappearing in the Pan and Maya of the Mayas of Central America. The god of the Welsh triads, "Hu the mighty," is found in the Hu-nap-bu, the hero-god of the Quiches; in Hu-napu, a hero-god; and in Hu-hu-nap-hu, in Hu-ncam, in Hu-nbatz, semi-divine heroes of the Quiches. The Phoenician deity El "was subdivided into a number of hypostases called the Baalim, secondary divinities, emanating from the substance of the deity" ("Anc. Hist. East," vol. ii., p. 219); and this word Baalim we find appearing in the mythology of the Central Americans, applied to the semi-divine progenitors of the human race, Balam-Quitze, Balam-Agab, and Iqui-Balam.

The tendency of scientific thought in ethnology is in the direction of giving more and more importance to the race characteristics, such as height, color of the hair, eyes and skin, and the formation of the skull and body generally, than to language. The language possessed by a people may be merely the result of conquest or migration. For instance, in the United States to-day, white, black, and red men, the descendants of French, Spanish, Italians, Mexicans, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, Africans, all speak the English language, and by the test of language they are all Englishmen; and yet none of them are connected by birth or descent with the country where that language was developed.

There is a general misconception as to the color of the European and American races. Europe is supposed to be peopled exclusively by white men; but in reality every shade of color is represented on that continent, from the fair complexion of the fairest of the Swedes to the dark-skinned inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast, only a shade lighter than the Berbers, or Moors, on the opposite side of that sea. Tacitus spoke of the "Black Celts," and the term, so far as complexion goes, might not inappropriately be applied to some of the Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese, while the Basques are represented as of a still darker hue. Tylor says ("Anthropology," p. 67), "On the whole, it seems that the distinction of color, from the fairest Englishman to the darkest African, has no hard and fast lines, but varies gradually from one tint to another."

And when we turn to America we find that the popular opinion that allIndians are "red men," and of the same hue from Patagonia to Hudson'sBay, is a gross error.

Prichard says ("Researches into the Physical History of Mankind," vol. i., p. 269, 4th ed., 1841):

"It will be easy to show that the American races show nearly as great a variety in this respect as the nations of the old continent; there are among them white races with a florid complexion, and tribes black or of a very dark hue; that their stature, figure, and countenance are almost equally diversified."

John T. Short says ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 189):

"The Menominees, sometimes called the 'White Indians,' formerly occupied the region bordering on Lake Michigan, around Green Bay. The whiteness of these Indians, which is compared to that of white mulattoes, early attracted the attention of the Jesuit missionaries, and has often been commented on by travellers. While it is true that hybridy has done much to lighten the color of many of the tribes, still the peculiarity of the complexion of this people has been marked since the first time a European encountered them. Almost every shade, from the ash-color of the Menominees through the cinnamon-red, copper, and bronze tints, may be found among the tribes formerly occupying the territory east of the Mississippi, until we reach the dark-skinned Kaws of Kansas, who are nearly as black as the negro. The variety of complexion is as great in South America as among the tribes of the northern part of the continent."

In foot-note of p. 107 of vol. iii. of "U. S. Explorations for aRailroad Route to the Pacific Ocean," we are told,

"Many of the Indians of Zuni (New Mexico) are white. They have a fair skin, blue eyes, chestnut or auburn hair, and are quite good-looking. They claim to be full-blooded Zunians, and have no tradition of intermarriage with any foreign race. The circumstance creates no surprise among this people, for from time immemorial a similar class of people has existed among the tribe."

Winchell says:

"The ancient Indians of California, in the latitude of forty-two degrees, were as black as the negroes of Guinea, while in Mexico were tribes of an olive or reddish complexion, relatively light. Among the black races of tropical regions we find, generally, some light-colored tribes interspersed. These sometimes have light hair and blue eyes. This is the case with the Tuareg of the Sahara, the Afghans of India, and the aborigines of the banks of the Oronoco and the Amazon." (Winchell's "Preadamites," p. 185.)

William Penn said of the Indians of Pennsylvania, in his letter ofAugust, 1683:

"The natives … are generally tall, straight, well-built, and of singular proportion; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin…. Their eye is little and black, not unlike a straight-looked Jew…. I have seen among them as comely European-like faces of both sexes as on your side of the sea; and truly an Italian complexion hath not much more of the white, and the noses of several of them have as much of the Roman…. For their original, I am ready to believe them to be of the Jewish race—I mean of the stock of the ten tribes—and that for the following reasons: first, in the next place, I find them to be of the like countenance, and their children of so lively a resemblance that a man would think himself in Duke's Place or Berry Street in London when he seeth them. But this is not all: they agree in rites, they reckon by moons, they offer their first-fruits, they have a kind of feast of tabernacles, they are said to lay their altars upon twelve stones, their mourning a year, customs of women, with many other things that do not now occur."

Upon this question of complexion Catlin, in his "Indians of North America," vol. i., p. 95, etc., gives us some curious information. We have already seen that the Mandans preserved an image of the ark, and possessed legends of a clearly Atlantean character. Catlin says:

"A stranger in the Mandan village is first struck with the different shades of complexion and various colors of hair which he sees in a crowd about him, and is at once disposed to exclaim, 'These are not Indians.' There are a great many of these people whose complexions appear as light as half-breeds; and among the women particularly there are many whose skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion of feature; with hazel, with gray, and with blue eyes; with mildness and sweetness of expression and excessive modesty of demeanor, which render them exceedingly pleasing and beautiful. Why this diversity of complexion I cannot tell, nor can they themselves account for it. Their traditions, so far as I can learn them, afford us no information of their having had any knowledge of white men before the visit of Lewis and Clarke, made to their village thirty-three years ago. Since that time until now (1835) there have been very few visits of white men to this place, and surely not enough to have changed the complexions and customs of a nation. And I recollect perfectly well that Governor Clarke told me, before I started for this place, that I would find the Mandans a strange people and half white.

"Among the females may be seen every shade and color of hair that can be seen in our own country except red or auburn, which is not to be found…. There are very many of both sexes, and of every age, from infancy to manhood and old age, with hair of a bright silvery-gray, and in some instances almost perfectly white. This unaccountable phenomenon is not the result of disease or habit, but it is unquestionably an hereditary characteristic which runs in families, and indicates no inequality in disposition or intellect. And by passing this hair through my hands I have found it uniformly to be as coarse and harsh as a horse's mane, differing materially from the hair of other colors, which, among the Mandans, is generally as fine and soft as silk.

"The stature of the Mandans is rather below the ordinary size of man, with beautiful symmetry of form and proportion, and wonderful suppleness and elasticity."

Catlin gives a group (54) showing this great diversity in complexion: one of the figures is painted almost pure white, and with light hair. The faces are European.

Major James W. Lynd, who lived among the Dakota Indians for nine years, and was killed by them in the great outbreak of 1862, says (MS. "Hist. of Dakotas," Library, Historical Society, Minnesota, p. 47), after calling attention to the fact that the different tribes of the Sioux nation represent several different degrees of darkness of color:

"The Dakota child is of lighter complexion than the young brave; this one lighter than the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man lighter than the superannuated homo, who, by smoke, paint, dirt, and a drying up of the vital juices, appears to be the true copper-colored Dakota. The color of the Dakotas varies with the nation, and also with the age and condition of the individual. It may be set down, however, as a shade lighter than olive; yet it becomes still lighter by change of condition or mode of life, and nearly vanishes, even in the child, under constant ablutions and avoiding of exposure. Those children in the Mission at Hazlewood, who are taken very young, and not allowed to expose themselves, lose almost entirely the olive shade, and become quite as white as the American child. The Mandans are as light as the peasants of Spain, while their brothers, the Crows, are as dark as the Arabs. Dr. Goodrich, in the 'Universal Traveller,' p. 154, says that the modern Peruvians, in the warmer regions of Peru, are as fair as the people of the south of Europe."

The Aymaras, the ancient inhabitants of the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, are described as having an olive-brown complexion, with regular features, large heads, and a thoughtful and melancholy cast of countenance. They practised in early times the deformation of the skull.

Professor Wilson describes the hair of the ancient Peruvians, as found upon their mummies, as "a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race." "The ancient Peruvians," says Short ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 187), "appear, from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an auburn-haired race." Garcilasso, who had an opportunity of seeing the body of the king, Viracocha, describes the hair of that monarch as snow-white. Haywood tells us of the discovery, at the beginning of this century, of three mummies in a cave on the south side of the Cumberland River (Tennessee), who were buried in baskets, as the Peruvians were occasionally buried, and whose skin was fair and white, and their hair auburn, and of a fine texture. ("Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee," p. 191.)

Neither is the common opinion correct which asserts all the American Indians to be of the same type of features. The portraits on this page and on pages 187 and 191, taken from the "Report of the U. S. Survey for a Route for a Pacific Railroad," present features very much like those of Europeans; in fact, every face here could be precisely matched among the inhabitants of the southern part of the old continent.

On the other hand, look at the portrait of the great Italian orator and reformer, Savonarola, on page 193. It looks more like the hunting Indians of North-western America than any of the preceding faces. In fact, if it was dressed with a scalp-lock it would pass muster anywhere as a portrait of the "Man-afraid-of-his-horses," or "Sitting Bull."

Adam was, it appears, a red man. Winchell tells us that Adam is derived from the red earth. The radical letters ÂDâM are found in ADaMaH, "something out of which vegetation was made to germinate," to wit, the earth. ÂDôM and ÂDOM signifies red, ruddy, bay-colored, as of a horse, the color of a red heifer. "ÂDâM, a man, a human being, male or female, red, ruddy." ("Preadamites," p. 161.)

"The Arabs distinguished mankind into two races, one red, ruddy, the other black." (Ibid.) They classed themselves among the red men.

Not only was Adam a red man, but there is evidence that, from the highest antiquity, red was a sacred color; the gods of the ancients were always painted red. The Wisdom of Solomon refers to this custom: "The carpenter carved it elegantly, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the shape of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint, coloring it red, and covering every spot therein."

The idols of the Indians were also painted red, and red was the religious color. (Lynd's MS. "Hist. of Dakotas," Library, Hist. Society, Minn.)

The Cushites and Ethiopians, early branches of the Atlantean stock, took their name from their "sunburnt" complexion; they were red men.

The name of the Phoenicians signified red. Himyar, the prefix of the Himyaritic Arabians, also means red, and the Arabs were painted red on the Egyptian monuments.

The ancient Egyptians were red men. They recognized four races of men—the red, yellow, black, and white men. They themselves belonged to the "Rot," or red men; the yellow men they called "Namu"—it included the Asiatic races; the black men were called "Nahsu," and the white men "Tamhu." The following figures are copied from Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 85, and were taken by them from the great works of Belzoni, Champollion, and Lepsius.

In later ages so desirous were the Egyptians of preserving the aristocratic distinction of the color of their skin, that they represented themselves on the monuments as of a crimson hue—an exaggeration of their original race complexion.

In the same way we find that the ancient Aryan writings divided mankind into four races—the white, red, yellow, and black: the four castes of India were founded upon these distinctions in color; in fact, the word for color in Sanscrit (varna) means caste. The red men, according to the Mahâbhârata, were the Kshatriyas—the warrior caste-who were afterward engaged in a fierce contest with the whites—the Brahmans—and were nearly exterminated, although some of them survived, and from their stock Buddha was born. So that not only the Mohammedan and Christian but the Buddhistic religion seem to be derived from branches of the Hamitic or red stock. The great Mann was also of the red race.

The Egyptians, while they painted themselves red-brown, represented the nations of Palestine as yellow-brown, and the Libyans yellow-white. The present inhabitants of Egypt range from a yellow color in the north parts to a deep bronze. Tylor is of opinion ("Anthropology," p. 95) that the ancient Egyptians belonged to a brown race, which embraced the Nubian tribes and, to some extent, the Berbers of Algiers and Tunis. He groups the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Andalusians, Bretons, dark Welshmen, and people of the Caucasus into one body, and designates them as "dark whites." The Himyarite Arabs, as I have shown, derived their name originally from their red color, and they were constantly depicted on the Egyptian monuments as red or light brown. Herodotus tells us that there was a nation of Libyans, called the Maxyans, who claimed descent from the people of Troy (the walls of Troy, we shall see, were built by Poseidon; that is to say, Troy was an Atlantean colony). These Maxyans painted their whole bodies red. The Zavecians, the ancestors of the Zuavas of Algiers (the tribe that gave their name to the French Zouaves), also painted themselves red. Some of the Ethiopians were "copper-colored." ("'Amer. Cyclop.," art. Egypt, p. 464.) Tylor says ("Anthropology," p. 160): "The language of the ancient Egyptians, though it cannot be classed in the Semitic family with Hebrew, has important points of correspondence, whether due to the long intercourse between the two races in Egypt or to some deeper ancestral connection; and such analogies also appear in the Berber languages of North Africa."

These last were called by the ancients the Atlanteans.

"If a congregation of twelve representatives from Malacca, China, Japan, Mongolia, Sandwich Islands, Chili, Peru, Brazil, Chickasaws, Comanches, etc., were dressed alike, or undressed and unshaven, the most skilful anatomist could not, from their appearance, separate them." (Fontaine's "How the World was Peopled," pp. 147, 244.)

Ferdinand Columbus, in his relation of his father's voyages, compares the inhabitants of Guanaani to the Canary Islanders (an Atlantean race), and describes the inhabitants of San Domingo as still more beautiful and fair. In Peru the Charanzanis, studied by M. Angraud, also resemble the Canary Islanders. L'Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined himself surrounded by Arabs when all his Indians of Rabinal were around him; for they had, he said, their complexion, features, and beard. Pierre Martyr speaks of the Indians of the Parian Gulf as having fair hair. ("The Human Species," p. 201.) The same author believes that tribes belonging to the Semitic type are also found in America. He refers to "certain traditions of Guiana, and the use in the country of a weapon entirely characteristic of the ancient Canary Islanders."

When science is able to disabuse itself of the Mortonian theory that the aborigines of America are all red men, and all belong to one race, we may hope that the confluence upon the continent of widely different races from different countries may come to be recognized and intelligently studied. There can be no doubt that red, white, black, and yellow men have united to form the original population of America. And there can be as little doubt that the entire population of Europe and the south shore of the Mediterranean is a mongrel race—a combination, in varying proportions, of a dark-brown or red race with a white race; the characteristics of the different nations depending upon the proportions in which the dark and light races are mingled, for peculiar mental and moral characteristics go with these complexions. The red-haired people are a distinct variety of the white stock; there were once whole tribes and nations with this color of hair; their blood is now intermingled with all the races of men, from Palestine to Iceland. Everything in Europe speaks of vast periods of time and long, continued and constant interfusion of bloods, until there is not a fair-skinned man on the Continent that has not the blood of the dark-haired race in his veins; nor scarcely a dark-skinned man that is not lighter in hue from intermixture with the white stock.

The Hebrews are a branch of the great family of which that powerful commercial race, the Phoenicians, who were the merchants of the world fifteen hundred years before the time of Christ, were a part. The Hebrews carried out from the common storehouse of their race a mass of traditions, many of which have come down to us in that oldest and most venerable of human compositions, the Book of Genesis. I have shown that the story of the Deluge plainly refers to the destruction of Atlantis, and that it agrees in many important particulars with the account given by Plato. The people destroyed were, in both instances, the ancient race that had created civilization; they had formerly been in a happy and sinless condition; they had become great and wicked; they were destroyed for their sins—they were destroyed by water.

But we can go farther, and it can be asserted that there is scarcely a prominent fact in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis that cannot be duplicated from the legends of the American nations, and scarcely a custom known to the Jews that does not find its counterpart among the people of the New World.

Even in the history of the Creation we find these similarities:

The Bible tells us (Gen. i., 2) that in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and covered with water. In the Quiche legends we are told, "at first all was sea—no man, animal, bird, or green herb—there was nothing to be seen but the sea and the heavens."

The Bible says (Gen. i., 2), "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Quiche legend says, "The Creator—the Former, the Dominator—the feathered serpent—those that give life, moved upon the waters like a glowing light."

The Bible says (Gen. i., 9), "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." The Quiche legend says, "The creative spirits cried out 'Earth!' and in an instant it was formed, and rose like a vapor-cloud; immediately the plains and the mountains arose, and the cypress and pine appeared."

The Bible tells us, "And God saw that it was good." The Quiche legend says, "Then Gucumatz was filled with joy, and cried out, 'Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, thunder-bolt.'"

The order in which the vegetables, animals, and man were formed is the same in both records.

In Genesis (chap. ii., 7) we are told, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." The Quiche legend says. "The first man was made of clay; but he had no intelligence, and was consumed in the water."

In Genesis the first man is represented as naked. The Aztec legend says, "The sun was much nearer the earth then than now, and his grateful warmth rendered clothing unnecessary."

Even the temptation of Eve reappears in the American legends. Lord Kingsborough says: "The Toltecs had paintings of a garden, with a single tree standing in the midst; round the root of the tree is entwined a serpent, whose head appearing above the foliage displays the face of a woman. Torquemada admits the existence of this tradition among them, and agrees with the Indian historians, who affirm that this was the first woman in the world, who bore children, and from whom all mankind are descended." ("Mexican Antiquities," vol. viii., p. 19.) There is also a legend of Suchiquecal, who disobediently gathered roses from a tree, and thereby disgraced and injured herself and all her posterity. ("Mexican Antiquities," vol. vi., p. 401.)

The legends of the Old World which underlie Genesis, and were used byMilton in the "Paradise Lost," appear in the Mexican legends of a war ofangels in heaven, and the fall of Zou-tem-que (Soutem, Satan—Arabic,Shatana?) and the other rebellious spirits.

We have seen that the Central Americans possessed striking parallels to the account of the Deluge in Genesis.

There is also a clearly established legend which singularly resembles the Bible record of the Tower of Babel.

Father Duran, in his MS. "Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana," A.D. 1585, quotes from the lips of a native of Cholula, over one hundred years old, a version of the legend as to the building of the great pyramid of Cholula. It is as follows:

"In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness, and void of any created thing; all was a plain, without hill or elevation, encircled in every part by water, without tree or created thing; and immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men of deformed stature and possessed the land, and desiring to see the nativity of the sun, as well as his occident, proposed to go and seek them. Dividing themselves into two parties, some journeyed to the west and others toward the east; these travelled; until the sea cut off their road, whereupon they determined to return to the place from which they started, and arriving at this place (Cholula), not finding the means of reaching the sun, enamored of his light and beauty, they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky. Having collected materials for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower; and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, 'Have you observed how they of the earth have built a high and haughty tower to mount hither, being enamored of the light of the sun and his beauty? Come and confound them, because it is not right that they of the earth, living in the flesh, should mingle with us.' Immediately the inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like flashes of lightning; they destroyed the edifice, and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the earth."

One can recognize in this legend the recollection, by a ruder race, of a highly civilized people; for only a highly civilized people would have attempted such a vast work. Their mental superiority and command of the arts gave them the character of giants who arrived from the East; who had divided into two great emigrations, one moving eastward (toward Europe), the other westward (toward America). They were sun-worshippers; for we are told "they were enamored of the light and beauty of the sun," and they built a high place for his worship.

The pyramid of Cholula is one of the greatest constructions ever erected by human hands. It is even now, in its ruined condition, 160 feet high, 1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty-five acres; we have only to remember that the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, covers but twelve or thirteen acres, to form some conception of the magnitude of this American structure.

It must not be forgotten that this legend was taken down by a Catholic priest, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, from the lips of an old Indian who was born before Columbus sailed from Spain.

Observe the resemblances between this legend and the Bible account of the building of the Tower of Babel:

"All was a plain without hill or elevation," says the Indian legend. "They found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there," says the Bible. They built of brick in both cases. "Let us build us a tower whose top may reach unto heaven," says the Bible. "They determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky," says the Indian legend. "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had builded. And the Lord said, Behold … nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and confound them," says the Bible record. "The Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, 'Have you observed,' etc. Come and confound them," says the Indian record. "And the Lord scattered them abroad from thence on all the face of the earth," says the Bible. "They scattered its builders to all parts of the earth," says the Mexican legend.

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