LIFE is extremely hard in Mexico. The absence of fuel and water places her industries at a great disadvantage, and to foster her crude industries she is compelled to put a prohibitory tariff on imports, which falls heavily upon the consumer. A reciprocity treaty with the United States would solve the problem, but who ever heard of the American Congress agreeing upon subjects of great importance. When I first went to Mexico each state collected its own custom duties independent of the national government, and custom officials met the train at every state line. I knew a lady who moved from Kansas to Nueva Leon, the second state across the border, and on a silver water-pitcher valued at $35, she paid anad valoremduty of $17.15. The custom regulations have changed now, and duty is no longer collected by individual states, but it is bad enough as it is. American ham in Mexico costs fifty cents a pound, cheese seventy-five cents, canned salmon one dollar a can, and mackerel twenty-five cents each.
Through the kindness of D. Appleton & Co., I am permitted to use some figures below, taken from that very excellent work by David A. Welles, “A Study of Mexico.”
“In 1885, an American living in the City of Mexico induced the landlady to order an American cooking-stove. In due time the stove arrived, and this is a copy of the bill presented and paid upon delivery:
ORIGINAL INVOICE:
IMPORT DUTIES:
RESUME:
[Note.—This stove was shipped from El Paso in a lot of goods for Messrs. —— & Co., the largest importing house in Mexico, thereby saving the expense of two-thirds the consular fees—$14-56—which, if paid on the invoice alone, would have added $9 71 to charges and raised the total to $117 49.]
[Note.—This stove was shipped from El Paso in a lot of goods for Messrs. —— & Co., the largest importing house in Mexico, thereby saving the expense of two-thirds the consular fees—$14-56—which, if paid on the invoice alone, would have added $9 71 to charges and raised the total to $117 49.]
In 1878 Hon. John W. Foster, then United States Minister to Mexico, in a communication to the Manufacturers’ Association of the Northwest, (Chicago) thus analyzed the items of cost, in the City of Mexico, of a tierce weighing gross 328 pounds, containing 300 pounds (net) of sugar cured hams:
Therefore, $1 in hams in New York was worth $2.82 in Mexico, or 31 cents per pound! A similar analysis showed that an invoice of ten kegs of cut nails, which cost in New York $22.50, when imported into the City of Mexico cost $141.64, or $1 value in nails in New York was equal to $6.29 in Mexico, and salt that cost $2 a barrel in New York, cost $20.40 in Mexico. These are simply specimens of tariff duty, but the internal revenue system is no less remarkable.
Every inhabitant of the republic who sells goods to the value of $20 must give the buyer an invoice of same, and affix and cancel a stamp of corresponding value. Retail sales are exempt from this law so long as they are less than $20. Retail sellers in the market, or others whose capital does not exceed $300, are exempt. Tickets of all descriptions, railroad, theatre, etc., must have a stamp, also each page of the report of meetings; each leaf of a merchant’s ledger, cash or day book, and every cigar sold separately must be delivered to the buyer in a stamped wrapper. Sales of spirits pay 3 per cent; gross receipts of railroads (city) 4 per cent; public amusements, 2 per cent of entrance fees; playing cards 50 per cent, and mercantile drafts pay a dollar on the hundred. Each beef animal on leaving a town pays 50 cents; each fat pig, 25 cents; each sheep, 12 cents; and everything else you can mention.
A miller in Mexico has to pay thirty-two separate taxes on his wheat, from the time it leaves his field till he can offer it to his customers as flour. The country swarms with officials who collect taxes from every conceivable source, fandangos, christenings, marriages, funerals, buryings, etc., while you live, and then collect taxes on your grave after you are dead. It is very much like a case I knew in Texas when a man was sentenced to prison for life, and the judge found that he had overlooked one indictment, so he promptly added ten years. I am puzzled to know if this taxation gave rise to the belief in the transmigration of souls, or whether the belief in transmigration gave the cue to the officials to collect from the shades. Perhaps this delinquent tax is charged to the estate of Purgatory et al. Every man between the ages of 18 and 66 is taxed for the privilege of living, and the only way to escape this tax is to live in Vera Cruz and die young. Poor old Mexico.
I might devote ten pages to this subject, but what is the use? A country with such a prohibitive tariff shuts out her only source of revenue on imports, and exports nothing of importance but money, so how can she survive except by robbing the people? The country is very poor, the State of South Carolina producing two and a half times as much as the entire northern half of Mexico, and if you compare them by proportionate areas, twenty-five times as much. The interminable system of taxation is the most despicable system on American soil.
I have at last discovered why so many beggars go naked in Mexico. They go naked and beg in order to escape the tax gatherer, since a man is taxed on clothes and material and upon all incomes greater than $150. History tells of a certain people that brought on a revolution and a republic, just on account of such harmlesspastime as licking stamps. The time will come in Mexico when the people will lick just one stamp too many, then they will rise in their might and stamp the industry in the ground. (Joke not intended).
“Thou unrelenting Past!Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain—And fetters strong and fast,Hold all within thy unbreathing reign.“Far in thy realm withdrawn,Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom;And glorious ages gone,Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.“Full many a mighty nameLurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevealed;With thee are silent fame,Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.”
“Thou unrelenting Past!Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain—And fetters strong and fast,Hold all within thy unbreathing reign.“Far in thy realm withdrawn,Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom;And glorious ages gone,Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.“Full many a mighty nameLurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevealed;With thee are silent fame,Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.”
“Thou unrelenting Past!Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain—And fetters strong and fast,Hold all within thy unbreathing reign.
“Far in thy realm withdrawn,Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom;And glorious ages gone,Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
“Full many a mighty nameLurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevealed;With thee are silent fame,Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.”
WHAT strange people first entered this land? Who built these stupendous monuments? Whence did they come and whither did they go? And what characters are these engraved on walls which no man can read? And what catastrophe removed from the continent every single inhabitant of a gifted race? And why do we strive so hard to lift the veil which for so long has guarded these strange portals?
Every man who has looked upon these speechless but eloquent landmarks of these vanishedraces feels a burning desire to know more of them. To the curious and inquisitive, Mexico offers an endless field, and a few of these most noted ruins will be mentioned here.
The pyramid of Cholula, covering forty-four acres of ground, has already been mentioned. On Lake Texcoco stood the ancient city of Texcoco, and here have been found the foundations of three great pyramids, built of adobe and burnt brick. Sculptured blocks with finely chiseled bas reliefs have also been found. Three miles from Texcoco is a group of ruins called the Hill of Tezcocingo. The hill is very regular in outline and rises to the height of six hundred feet. The most noted part of this hill is the aqueduct which supplied it with water. The embankment which leads the aqueduct from the mountain is from sixty to two hundred feet high. The canals which brought the water are cemented with mortar mixed with pounded brick. Thirty miles from the capital are the ruins of Teotihuacan, “The City of the Gods.” Here are two immense pyramids dedicated to the Sun and Moon. The one to the Sun is seven hundred and sixty feet square and two hundred and sixteen feet high, with three terraces, the one to the Moon is one hundred and fifty feet high. Between them is a paved road one hundred and thirty feet wide. There are a number of smaller pyramids dedicated to the stars and the whole valley for six miles is strewn with relics.
On the Mexican Central Railroad, sixty miles from the city, is the town of Tula, or Tollan as it was called by the Toltecs. This was their ancient capital and is covered with ruins. There are two pyramids, probably dedicated to theSun and Moon. One is one hundred and ninety six feet square and forty-six feet high, and the other one hundred and thirty one feet square and thirty-one feet high, and both rest upon raised foundations. The hillside for a mile has evidences of buildings made from adobe, brick and cut stone. At Queretaro, it was found that all the projecting points were made strong by ditches, walls and embankments. Bancroft in his “Native Races” says that at Canoas there is a fortified hill with forty-five defensive works, including a wall forty feet high, and a rectangular platform with an area of five thousand square feet.
At Quemada in the state of Zacatecas is said to be a hill whose every approach is guarded by walls of stone, with paved roads for many miles surrounding it. On top of the hill was a citadel, guarded by a wall twenty feet high and nine feet thick. To the south of Cholula are the ruins of Xochicalco, the “Hill of Flowers,” said to be the finest ruins in Mexico. The hill is a natural one rising nearly four hundred feet and having a circumference of nearly three miles. The hill was surrounded by a wide ditch and terraced to the top. Five of these terraces wind around the hill, and are paved with stone laid in mortar, and supported by perpendicular walls of stone. The top of the hill was leveled to an area of two hundred and eighty-five by three hundred and twenty-eight feet, upon which was a pyramid five stories high. The neighboring farmers have been using it as a stone-quarry, but there yet remain some fine specimens of chiseled bas-relief. These huge masses of porphyry were cut by people unacquainted with theuse of iron, and as one sculptured block is eight feet long and three feet broad, and was carried nearly four hundred feet up the mound, we can appreciate the labor involved. There is no stone in this neighborhood, and yet the whole of this hill, three miles in circumference, is cased in stone. What a warlike neighborhood this must have been to require such fortification!
At Monte Alban is another group of a similar kind. At the summit of the hill is a platform half a mile wide, literally covered with sculptured stone. Mr. Bandelier considers this the most precious remains of aboriginal work on the continent. In the state of Oaxaca are the celebrated ruins of Mitla, built by a different people from the others. Besides the two mounds, Mr. Bandelier found the remains of thirty-nine buildings, most of which were built of stone. Huge blocks of stone were used and covered with a facing in which were traced peculiar geometrical designs. The columns are huge stone pillars without chapter or base. Mitla is an isolated spot with the pall of the tomb around it, except for the Zapotec Indians who live near. At Guingola in the same state is a fortified hill and a ruined settlement. In the state of Vera Cruz on the Panuco river Mr. Norman found twenty mounds and the ruins of a great city now covered by a forest. Cortez found this place inhabited by Totonac Indians whose traditions knew nothing of the ruins. The largest mound covers two acres, and was faced with stone 18 inches square. From the sculptures and inscriptions it was probably the work of the Mayas.
The Smithsonian Report of 1873, page 373,says: “There is hardly a foot of ground in the state of Vera Cruz, in which, by excavation, either a broken obsidian knife or a piece of pottery is not found.” The Mayas here probably made their last stand against the invading Nahuas, who also had to retreat before the advancing Totonacs. The ruins around Orizaba and Jalapa belong to this class. At Papantla is a pyramid ninety feet square and seven stories high, built solid, with a stairway leading to the top. Also at Tuscapam is another pyramid and the remains of many other buildings. When the country is fully explored, there will probably be as many more found as are already known.
One of the latest discoveries happened while I was in Mexico in 1896, and was by a Cuban, Mr. G. M. Moliner, who lives in the city of Mexico. He spent four years in Egypt, and for ten years has studied archæology in America. He has a sword which he found in Mexico and which he claims is coeval with the time of the Phoenicians. It is of copper and weighed eight pounds when discovered, and the scabbard four. The characters on one side he describes as Persian, and on the other as Phoenician. The inscription “Tai Abracadabra” was pointed out to a representative of the Mexican Herald, and the symbols of the gnostic beasts, the man, the eagle and the dragon, and the blade represents the bull’s tongue. He has also discovered a curio of copper, representing episodes in the history of the mound-builders as he claims, showing the city of the sun, figures of warriors, the conquering race armed with swords and oval shields, and bearing the insignia of the wolf’s head, while the conquered race is armed withbattle axes and fire poles, and have the insignia of a bird’s claw. When he discovered this piece of copper, he also discovered what he calls the missing link between the past and present. It is a piece of jet black marble about ten inches square and polished as smooth as glass.
Mr. Moliner claims that this stone contains an epitome of the prehistoric race and the link that connects them to Asia. This missing link is the imprint of the head of Hermes, found in one corner of the lustrous black marble. This design is about two inches square, and though the marble is half an inch thick, the impression is on both sides. He claims that the design was painted and imbedded by discoloring acids. He has had the stone photographed and the study of the photograph is most interesting. The room must be darkened and only a little light must reach it. He explained that the ancient priests did this painting in the dark, through green obsidian glasses, and it must be viewed under similar conditions. Looking at the photograph in full light, it presented an enlarged representation of the alleged head of Hermes as found on the marble. When the room was darkened and the full glare of the light shone on it through green glasses, the photograph had the appearance of burnished silver. By shifting the photograph, caves and rocks would appear, and by another shifting appeared the outlines of a building with towers and turrets on the crest of a rock, showing a building of archaic architecture such as is seen in ancient biblical illustrations. Mr. Moliner declares this to be the ancient Chapultepec. By another shifting of the light, the head of Hermes appeared withfive component parts, to wit: the sacred Maya stone, the sacrificial knife, the imperial diadem, and the mask and artificial snout found in Mexico by the conquerors, the last three being in use by the Aztecs from time immemorial. From the upper part of this head of Hermes rose a trinity of faces, more or less distinct, one looking straight ahead, and the other two right and left.
One of the oldest of religious trinities is that of Hermes, and Mr. Moliner claims that his discovery is similar to the symbol in the Louvre in Paris. The head of Hermes as found in the Louvre is on white marble, a slab eight feet high, and underneath it the inscription “Hermes from the Pelagic Times.”
The foregoing descriptions have been of ruins of the Nahuatl tribes; we will now turn to those of the Mayas where
“Antiquity appears to have begunLong after their primeval race was run.”
“Antiquity appears to have begunLong after their primeval race was run.”
“Antiquity appears to have begunLong after their primeval race was run.”
The city of Copan, in Honduras near the Guatemala line, claims to be the oldest city in America. What must be the feelings of the traveler as he gropes through a tropical forest and comes face to face with this huge structure? First there is a terrace eight hundred and nine feet one way and six hundred and twenty-four feet the other way, seventy-six feet high and containing twenty-six million cubic feet of stone, brought from a quarry two miles away. On the terrace were four pyramids, the largest rising one hundred and seventy-two feet, and surmounted by two huge trees rooted in its mold. Within these ruins were found fourteen statues,the largest thirteen feet four inches tall, and all covered with bas reliefs and hieroglyphics whose workmanship was equal to that on the Egyptian pyramids. In front of the statues stand huge altars six feet square, divided into thirty-six tablets of hieroglyphics which tell to the world their history, but they speak in an unknown tongue, and we do not know whether these are the emblems of a Mayan pantheon or the relics from the palace of pre-Adamic man. Everywhere is a dark mystery which has baffled the scholars of the world for these three hundred years. The curtain falls, the traveler returns, and the æons begin again their cycles around mysterious Copan.
North of Copan is the hamlet of Quiriga, with ruins similar to those of Copan, made of cut sandstone. Mr. Catherton found eight standing statues, one fallen, and the fragments of thirteen more. The hieroglyphics are similar to those of Copan, but the statues are two or three times as tall. No people have ever been found with any tradition whatever concerning these mysterious ruins. Throughout Yucatan and Guatemala are ruins and inscriptions, but the people and their traditions have been swallowed up by oblivion. Northward out of Guatemala in the state of Chiapas in Mexico is Palenque, the sphinx and Mecca of Central America. This is a fertile, productive country, which was deserted and covered with ruins when Cortez landed. This old deserted city covers more than a mile. The pyramid, according to Mr. Stephens’ measurement at the base was 310 by 260 feet, and was cased in stone, now thrown down by the growth of trees. In one room of the templewas found a stone tablet four feet long and three feet broad, and sculptured in bas relief. It is set in the wall and around it is a stucco border, but its significance is unknown. The principal figure is carved with a necklace of pearls around the neck, and suspended from the pearls is a medallion containing a face. Rising from the center of the ruins is a tower thirty feet square with a staircase. Southwest of the palace is the pyramid called the “Temple of Inscriptions,” whose slope was 110 feet of solid masonry. Each of the corner pieces contained on its surface hieroglyphics, each of which contained 96 squares.
In Uxmal are ruins that rival Palenque and are the most interesting of any in Yucatan. There are so many, we will mention only one, and give the dimensions on the authority of Bancroft. The pyramid is 350 feet square at the base and surmounts a quadrangle of buildings. The building on the south is 279 feet long, 28 feet wide and 18 feet high. The one on the north is 264 feet long, 28 feet wide and 25 feet high. The eastern one is 158 feet long, 35 feet wide and 22 feet high and the western one 173 feet long, 35 feet wide and 20 feet high. These buildings contained 76 rooms all facing an open court 214 by 258 feet. The walls are massive, of solid rock and 9 feet thick, and the floors were cemented. The most attractive part of the whole building is the beautiful facades which cover 24,000 feet of surface and are pronounced the finest of native American art. The major trend of the facade is diamond lattice work, with the turtle, serpent and elephant’s trunk alternating. The terrace which supportedthis building contained 60,000 cubic yards of material. The walls were of massive masonry, and the sculpture is truly artistic, and yet these people knew not the use of metallic tools.
Here was enacted the greatest tragedy that history has ever recorded. At these altars unnumbered priests waved their censers in the worship of Quetzacoatl, the nature god of the Mayas, and now their cities are overgrown by a tropical forest and are lost to the world, which knows neither their name nor location, and it was by the merest accident that we know of their very existence. Nepenthe rules here supreme. A tropical forest has overgrown their pyramids and trees nine feet in diameter now close the entrance to their temples, and nine feet of vegetable mold now cover the altars where sacerdotal processions performed their mysterious rites probably while Cheops was building.
“By midnight moons o’er moistening dews,In vestments for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues,The hunter and the deer a shade.”Philip Freneau.
“By midnight moons o’er moistening dews,In vestments for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues,The hunter and the deer a shade.”Philip Freneau.
“By midnight moons o’er moistening dews,In vestments for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues,The hunter and the deer a shade.”Philip Freneau.
FROM the foregoing chapter we see that the ancient Aztec civilization had nothing in common with the red Indian. Buildings, customs and religion linked him to a higher civilization, or else prove that he possessed the germs of self-evolution, enabled him to cope with the great unknown, and single-handed to civilize himself. The latter process will be hard to believe, the former will be hard to prove; but for argument we will take a hasty glance at other nations whose history corresponds most closely with the ancient inhabitants of Mexico.
The Chaldeans, according to Berosus, held that the world is periodically destroyed by deluges and conflagrations. They believed that the deluges were caused by the conjunction of the planets in Capricorn, and the conflagrations by conjunction in Cancer. The Chaldean philosophers had also theirAnnus Magnusor great year, at the end of which the present terrestrial and cosmical order would terminate by fire and afterwards be renewed.
The ancient Scythians believed that the world undergoes revolution both by fire and by water. The Egyptians believed that the earth would flourish through the interval expressed by theAnnus Magnusor great year, a cycle, as with the Chaldeans, composed of revolutions of the sun and moon, and terminating when they returned together to the same sign whence they set out. At the end of each cycle the earth was supposed to be destroyed by fire or water, and to be renovated for the abode of man. The Hindoo cosmogony taught the doctrine of secular catastrophes and renovations. Water is then introduced, over which moves Brahma, the creator. Brahma then causes dry land to appear and vivifies the earth in succession with plants, animals and man, then he sleeps 4320 millions of years—a day for Brahma, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. The fire is finally quenched by rain which falls a hundred years and inundates heaven and earth. The breath of Vishnu next becomes a strong wind by which the clouds are dispersed, and Deity in the form of Brahma awakes from his serpent couch on the deep and renews the world, and sleeps again another day. The power of Brahma is thus outlined by Emerson:
“If the red slayer thinks he slays,Or if the slain thinks he is slain,They know not well the subtle waysI keep, and pass, and turn again.“Far or forgot, to me is near,Shadow and sunshine are the same;The vanished gods to me appear,And one to me are shame and fame.“They reckon ill who leave me out.When me they fly I am the wings;I am the doubter and the doubt,And I the hymn the Brahman sings.“The strong god pines for my abode,And pine in vain the sacred seven;But thou, meek lover of the good,Find me and turn thy back on heaven.”
“If the red slayer thinks he slays,Or if the slain thinks he is slain,They know not well the subtle waysI keep, and pass, and turn again.“Far or forgot, to me is near,Shadow and sunshine are the same;The vanished gods to me appear,And one to me are shame and fame.“They reckon ill who leave me out.When me they fly I am the wings;I am the doubter and the doubt,And I the hymn the Brahman sings.“The strong god pines for my abode,And pine in vain the sacred seven;But thou, meek lover of the good,Find me and turn thy back on heaven.”
“If the red slayer thinks he slays,Or if the slain thinks he is slain,They know not well the subtle waysI keep, and pass, and turn again.
“Far or forgot, to me is near,Shadow and sunshine are the same;The vanished gods to me appear,And one to me are shame and fame.
“They reckon ill who leave me out.When me they fly I am the wings;I am the doubter and the doubt,And I the hymn the Brahman sings.
“The strong god pines for my abode,And pine in vain the sacred seven;But thou, meek lover of the good,Find me and turn thy back on heaven.”
The Jews also hold a prophecy that the world was to endure 2000 years before the flood, 2000 under the law and 2000 under the Messiah, and then to be destroyed by water, and a large part of the Christian world accepts the same today.
Orpheus and Menander, early Greek poets who lived in the twilight of Greek civilization, reproduce the myth of theAnnus Magnus, and teach that the earth is to be destroyed at the completion of the cycle. In the Sybilline books, 1300 years before our era, this faith is shadowed and the world is destined to endure ten ages, the first of which is the Golden Age. After a renovation by fire the Golden Age will return, when, according to Virgil, the serpent will perish; the earth will produce her crops spontaneously; the kid will no longer fear the lion; the grape will be borne upon the thorn-bush, and scarlet and yellow and royal purple will become the native colors of the woolly fleece:
“Ipsæ lacte domum referent distenta capellæUbera; nec magnos netuent armenta leones.Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores;Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneniOccidet; Assyrium vulgo nascetur amomum.* * * * *Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,Et duræ quercus sudabunt roscida mella.”
“Ipsæ lacte domum referent distenta capellæUbera; nec magnos netuent armenta leones.Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores;Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneniOccidet; Assyrium vulgo nascetur amomum.* * * * *Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,Et duræ quercus sudabunt roscida mella.”
“Ipsæ lacte domum referent distenta capellæUbera; nec magnos netuent armenta leones.Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores;Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneniOccidet; Assyrium vulgo nascetur amomum.* * * * *Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,Et duræ quercus sudabunt roscida mella.”
According to Winchell, the Stoics got the same doctrine from the Phoenicians, and in speaking of the restoration after the conflagration, use the same term we find in the Scriptures, though written many hundred years earlier. Chrysippus calls it “Apocatastasis”—restitution—as St. Peter does in the Acts. Marcus Antoninus several times calls it “Palingenesia”—regeneration—as our Savior does in Matthew, and Paul in his epistle to Titus. The Pythagoreans, who taught the transmigration of souls, had the same ideas regarding the revolutions as had the Stoics. Plato taught the same, and Aristotle alone of all the ancient philosophers, taught the immortality of the soul and a continuance of the present order of things.
Among the Arabians, the story of the Phœnix is an allegory of the earth. This bird of fable no sooner crumbles to ashes than she rises again in more than pristine beauty. They have a similar story of the eagle which goes to the sun to renew its strength, and David alludes to the myth in the Psalms where he says: “Thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s,”—a passage which in the Chaldee language reads: “Thou shalt renew thy youth like the eagle in the world to come.” The Persians represent their god, Fire, as the final avenger of the earth. The Aztecs, according to Humboldt, felt the curiosity common to man in every stage of civilization, to lift the veil which covers the mysterious past and the awful future. They sought relief likethe nations of the old world, from the oppressive idea of eternity, by breaking it up into distinct periods or cycles of time, each of several thousand years. There were four of these cycles, and at the end of each, by the agency of one of the elements, the human family was swept from the earth, and the sun blotted from the heavens, to be rekindled again by sacred fire.
The great feast of the “renewal of fire” began on the last day of the Sothic period of fifty-two years, when the last fragment of time lost by leap year had been made up. In the evening the fire was extinguished throughout the valley, and all the earthen vessels were broken in preparation for the end of the world. At this time every one was in terrible suspense, fearing he had seen the sun for the last time. The whole empire was a prey to anxiety, and the people stood on the temples watching the mountain tops, where bonfires would be lighted if the gods showed themselves merciful. Then processions of priests marched to the mountain so as to arrive at midnight, when they solemnly awaited the turn of the night which would assure them that the sun would rise once more and continue fifty-two years to the end of the next cycle. When the critical hour had passed, a priest with two sticks and a rotary motion of the hands produced the sacred fire. Then a funeral pyre was raised and the victims sacrificed. Then an extraordinary activity followed the despondency, and every one lighted his torch from the funeral pile and hastened to his dwelling, and couriers with the sacred fire spread through all the empire and the new blaze was kindled in every hearth and on every templetop, and they were happy for they had fifty-two years more to live. The thirteen days complementary to the cycle—intended to make the solar and civil years agree—were spent in whitewashing and renewing their furniture for the new cycle.
The Aztecs believed in the periodical destruction of the world and had a tradition of the flood, and their idea of the re-peopling of the earth very nearly coincides with Jewish scriptures. The following is a translation of the Popol Vuh, or National Book of the Quiches of Guatemala; “There was not yet a single man; not an animal; neither birds, nor fishes, nor crabs, nor wood, nor stones, nor ravines, nor forests; only the sky existed. The face of the land was not seen; there was only the silent sea and the sky. There was not yet a body, naught to attach itself to another; naught that balanced itself; naught that made a sound in the sky. There was nothing that stood upright; naught there was but the peaceful sea—the sea, silent and solitary in its limits; for there was nothing that was. * * * Those who fecundated, those who give life, are upon the waters like a growing light. * * * While they consulted, the day broke, and at the moment of dawn, man appeared. While they consulted, the earth grew. Thus verily, took place the creation as the earth came into being.$1‘Earth’ said they; and the earth existed. Like a fog, like a cloud, was the formation; as huge fishes rise in the water, so rose the mountains; and in a moment the high mountains existed.”
This is the account of the first creation, and what follows, refers to the fourth and last creation.—“Hear, now, when it was first thought of man, and of what man should be formed. At that time spake he who gives life, and he who gives form, the Maker and Moulder, named Tepen, Gucumatz;$1‘The day draws near; the work is done; the supporter, the servant is ennobled; he is the sun of light, the child of whiteness; man is honored; the race of man is upon the earth.’ So they spake.” * * * Immediately they began to speak of making our first mother and our father. Only of yellow corn and white corn were they flesh, and the substance of the arms end legs of man. They were called simplybeings, formed and fashioned; they had neither mother nor father; we call them simplymen.
Woman did not bring them forth, nor were they born of the Builder and Moulder, by Him who fecundates, and Him who gives being. “Thought was in them; they saw; they looked around; their vision took in all things; they perceived the world; they cast their eye from the sky to the earth.” “Then they were asked by the Builder and Moulder$1‘What think you of your being? See ye not? Understand ye not? Your language, your limbs, are they not good? Look around, beneath the heavens; see ye not the mountains and the plains?’
“Then they looked and saw all there was beneath the heavens. And they gave thanks to the Maker and the Moulder, saying;$1‘Truly, twice, and three times thanks! We have being; we have been given a mouth, a face; we speak, we understand, we think, we walk, we feel, and we know that which is far and that which is near. All great things and small on the earthand in the sky do we see. Thanks to thee, O Maker, O Moulder, that we have been created, that we have our being, O our Grandmother, O our Grandfather!’”[A]
Is there anything more noble in any language than these sentiments of untutored beings, striving to lift the veil and peer into the beyond? No philosopher in any land ever gave tongue to more lofty sentiments, nor approached nearer the real truth of divination, and we must remember, these sentiments were not borrowed from the Spaniards, but were recorded in the native writing of Guatemala, ages before the coming ofLos Conquestadors. The Aztec worshipped many gods, but he also believed in one Great God, the “Causer of Causes.” To him was never an image made. He was reverenced under the name of Teotl, but being invisible and infinite, they never attempted to make a likeness of him, either in idols or in painting. They made sacrifice of human beings, but not to Teotl.
I herewith present a prayer, translated from the Aztec language by Lucien Biart, and addressed to the Unseen God:—“Mighty God, thou who givest me life, and whose slave I am, grant me the supreme grace of giving me meat and drink; grant me the enjoyment of thy clemency, that it may support me in my labors and in my wants. Have pity on me who live sad, poor and abandoned, and since I serve theeby sweeping thy temple, open to me the hand of thy mercy.”
What this lacks of being the Lord’s Prayer, is hardly worth mentioning.
All the other ancient nations we have mentioned, had intercourse with one another. The Greeks studied in Egypt, and had dealings with the Phœnicians. The Jews were taken captives to the east and the Hindoos spread to the west, so it is not strange that they should all have an almost identical cosmogony, but here is a people separated by an ocean, having the same belief, a knowledge of the art of building, of sculpture and of writing. Then how shall we account for all this unless we suppose that they had known contact with each other in some past age? Alfred Wallace, the great English scientist, says that none but the unscientific ever resurrect the Atlantis theory, but with the risk of being declared unscientific, I wish to present some facts of scientific value, and leave the verdict with the reader.
“Man’s steps are not upon thy paths; thy fieldsAre not a spoil for him; thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth’s destruction, thou dost all despise,Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,And send him, shivering in thy playful spray,And howling to his gods, where haply liesHis petty hope in some near port or bay,And dash him again to earth—there let him lie.”
“Man’s steps are not upon thy paths; thy fieldsAre not a spoil for him; thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth’s destruction, thou dost all despise,Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,And send him, shivering in thy playful spray,And howling to his gods, where haply liesHis petty hope in some near port or bay,And dash him again to earth—there let him lie.”
“Man’s steps are not upon thy paths; thy fieldsAre not a spoil for him; thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth’s destruction, thou dost all despise,Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,And send him, shivering in thy playful spray,And howling to his gods, where haply liesHis petty hope in some near port or bay,And dash him again to earth—there let him lie.”
“THE Story of Atlantis,” recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, as communicated to Solon by the Egyptian priests, has, in the light of modern geography, been generally regarded as a myth, but within a few years has been revived, and there are not wanting investigators of profound learning who regard it as authentic. The following is the translation from the Greek of Plato: “Among the great deeds of Athens, of which the recollection is preserved in our books, there is one which should be placed above all others. Our books tell that the Athenians destroyed an army which came across the Atlantic Sea, and insolently invaded Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait where you place the Pillars of Hercules, there was an island larger than Asia(Minor) and Lybya combined. From this island one could pass easily to other islands, and from these to the continent which lies around the Interior Sea.
“The sea on this side the strait (Gibraltar) of which we speak, resembles an harbor with a narrow entrance; but there is a genuine sea, and the land which surrounds it is a veritable continent. In the Island of Atlantis lived three kings with great and marvelous power. They had under their dominion the whole of Atlantis, several other islands and some parts of the continent.
“At one time their power extended into Lybya, and into Europe as far as Tyrrhenia (Italy), and uniting their whole force, they sought to destroy our whole country at a blow; but their defeat stopped the invasion and gave entire independence to all the countries this side the Pillars of Hercules. Afterwards, in one day and one fatal night, there came earthquakes and inundations which engulfed the warlike people.
“Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, and then that sea became inaccessible so that navigation on it ceased on account of the quantity of mud the engulfed island left in its place.”
Plutarch, in his life of Solon, relates that when the law-giver was in Egypt “he conferred with the priests and learned the story of Atlantis.”
Diodorus Siculus states that: “Over against Africa lies a very great island, in the vast ocean many days’ sail from Lybya westward. The soil there is very fruitful, a great part whereof is mountainous, but much likewise champaign,which is the most sweet and pleasant part, for it is watered by several navigable streams, and beautiful with many gardens of pleasure, planted by divers sorts of trees and an abundance of orchards. The towns are adorned with stately buildings and banqueting houses, pleasantly situated in the gardens and orchards.”
Theopompus who wrote in the fourth century B. C. tells substantially the same story, which was given by Silenus to the ancient King Midas, recorded by Aristotle.[B]The Gauls possessed traditions on the subject, which were collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first century, B. C. This record states that three distinct people dwelt in Gaul (France). 1, The Aborigines; 2, The invaders from a distant island, (Atlantis); 8, The Aryan Gauls. Marcellus also, in a book on the Ethiopians speaks of several islands lying on the Atlantic ocean near Europe, which we may undoubtedly identify as the Canaries; but he adds: “The inhabitants of these islands preserve the memory of a much greater island, Atlantis, which had for a long time exercised dominion over the smaller ones.”
Now, all these writers most positively state that an island did exist west of Africa, and was destroyed by a cataclysm. This island could not have been very far from the shores of America, for the tribes of Central America, in Mexico, in Venezuela and in British and Dutch Guiana, distinctly describe these cataclysms, one by water, one by fire and a third by winds.
Catlin, in his “Lifted and Subsided Rocks in America,” describes the traditions of such acataclysm. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his “Quatre Lettres sur La Mexique,” and his “Sources de l’Histoire Primitive du Mexique,” has translated the “Teo Amoxtli,” which is the Toltecan mythological history of the cataclysm of the Antilles. Catlin found the tradition of such a cataclysm among the Indians of North America. The Indians farther south state that the water was seen coming in waves like mountains from the east, and of the tens of thousands who ran for the high ground of the west, only one man, by one authority, and two by another, and seven by another, succeeded in reaching high ground, and from them sprang the present race of Indians. The tribes near the coast distinctly describe three cataclysms, water, fire, and winds, while those inland were sensible only of the flood of waters which ran to the base of the mountains.[C]
“From amidst the thunder and flames which came out of the sea, whilst mountains were sinking and rising, the terror-stricken inhabitants sought every expedient of safety. Some fled to the mountains, and some launched their rafts and canoes upon the turbulent waters, trusting that a favorable current might land them upon a hospitable shore, and thus in the elemental strife the ancient civilized people became widely dispersed.”[D]
“The festival of$1‘Izcalli’ was instituted to commemorate this terrible calamity, in which princes and people humbled themselves before the Divinity and besought Him not to renew the frightful convulsions.”
It is claimed that by this catastrophe, an area larger than the Kingdom of France became engulfed, including the Lesser Antilles, the extensive banks at their eastern base, which at that date were vast fertile plains, the peninsula of Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala and the great estuaries of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. With the peninsula of Yucatan went down the splendid cities of Palenque, whose sites are now in the ocean bed as well as the bones of the inhabitants, and the continent has since risen sufficiently to restore the sites of a number of the ancient cities, but the people were blotted from the face of the earth. There is nothing more remarkable than the truthfulness of the traditions of North American Indians. For hundreds of years tradition has said that the Enchanted Mesa in New Mexico had been once inhabited, and during the present year, an expedition from the Smithsonian Institution explored the Mesa and verified the tradition.
In proof of the Cataclysm and submergence of Central America, our modern geographies tell us that Old Guatemala was destroyed by a water volcano in the sixteenth century, and again in the eighteenth by an earthquake. The sea shells on both sides the Isthmus of Panama are alike, and according to the law of the geographical distribution of animals, this could only have come about by the Isthmus having at one time been submerged, and remaining so long enough for the intermingling of species and being raised again, and the fossils on both sides support the hypothesis. The situation of Atlantis, west of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, would be so near to Central America that any disturbance, like theone described by Plato, would be compelled to affect Central America in the manner described by the traditions of the natives.
The nearest lands west of Africa, where Plato locates Atlantis, are the Canary Islands, the nearest being fifty miles from Africa, and the whole group extending three hundred miles, and are separated from the mainland by a channel more than five thousand feet deep. Of all the oceanic islands (not continental) discovered by Europeans, theCanaries alone were inhabited, Here they found the Guanches, now extinct, who at the time of their discovery were not aware that a continent existed in their neighborhood, for, on being asked by the missionaries how they came to this archipelago, they answered: “God placed us on these islands, and then forsook and forgot us.”
Now who were the Guanches? Their islands had never been connected with Africa, because the channel between them is a mile deep, and Wallace in his “Island Life” has proved that any island surrounded by water more than five thousand feet deep is of volcanic origin. If craniometry is a reliable science the Guanches were not savages, but superior to the Egyptians. According to Prof. Flower’s measurements, the skull of the English of low grade contains one thousand five hundred and forty-two cubic centimeters, the Guanches one thousand four hundred and ninety-eight, Japanese one thousand four hundred and eighty-six, Chinese one thousand four hundred and twenty-four, Italians one thousand four hundred and seventy-five, and the ancient Egyptians one thousand four hundred and sixty-four. That the remnant of a racefound in mid-ocean should have a better developed brain than many continental nations, is significant, and if the Guanches were a part of the inhabitants of Atlantis, we can easily understand their ability to make war and subdue their neighbors as related by Plato.
The late Sir Anders Retzius, of Stockholm, the learned authority on craniometry says: “The Dolichocephali of America are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic population of Africa,—Moors, Turaricks, Copts, etc.—and the same kind of skull is found in the Canary Islands in front of the African Coast, and on the Islands in the Caribbean Sea on the opposite coast which faces Africa. The color of the skin in the population on both sides of the Atlantic is reddish brown, resembling tanned leather; the hair is the same; the features of the face and the build of the frame as I am led to believe, presenting the same analogy.”[E]
And now as to their dispersion. When Columbus set sail from Palos in 1492, he steered direct for the Canary Islands for repairs, and when he left the Canaries, without any effort of his own, the trade winds carried his vessels straight to the West Indies, and these winds blow in this direction all the time. In December 1731 a ship started from Teneriffe with a cargo of wine for one of the western Canaries, and having only six men on board the ship became unmanageable, and the trade winds carried them straight to Trinidad on the Island of Cuba. While Atlantis was sinking, some of the inhabitants likely escaped on rafts and boats, and being exactly in the location whence Columbus and the Teneriffe ship were, they had nothing to do but to wait, and the trade winds would take them to the West Indices and Yucatan and Central America. We can now easily see why the oldest civilization of America is in Central America. Some of the immigrants stopped in the West Indies, for the aborigines Columbus found there spoke the same language as the Mayas and Caribs of Yucatan speak today. Some stopped in South America, for Dr. Lund, the Swedish naturalist, found in the bone caves of Minas Geraes, Brazil, human skulls identical with those of Mexico. This may possibly account for the superior civilization of Peru, where the ingrafted population would amalgamate with the native races and produce those wonderful paved roads the Spaniards found there.
Of course there will be objections to this hypothesis, and we will now proceed to answer the objections.
Dr. Waitz, in his “Anthropology of Primitive Peoples” says: “The first elements of civilization as far as history reaches, always appear as communicated from one people to another, and of no people can it be proved how, where and when they have become civilized by their own inherent power.”
If this be true, then the ancient Mexican must have learned civilization from some other people, and we know the red Indian had none to spare. Winchell in his genealogical charts, represents the entire peopling of the Pacific Slope from Alaska to Chili by Mongoloid branches. The world knows that Mongolian civilization has always been fossilized and the race is absolutelydevoid of civilizing qualities. Their state is founded upon the worship of their ancestors, and their exalted egotism has for ages resisted every attempt to force advancement among them. To say that the Mongols crossed Behring Strait and gave origin to the Esquimaux is entirely compatible, for the Esquimaux are just about the calibre a Chinese colony of that date would produce. To say that Mongols are the source of Aztec civilization and Inca sun-worship is to propound an anthropological paradox. From Alaska to the ancient confines of Mexico, there is not one stone left to acknowledge the hundreds of years of Esquimo and Indian occupancy, so we cannot expect light from that source.
Separated from Africa by a channel only fifty miles wide, we may with justice assume that the civilization of the continent of Atlantis and that of Egypt was very similar. Egypt is the only land of the ancient world where pyramids are found, and on a direct line with the trade winds we find pyramids in Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. In Egypt we find the temples emblazoned with hieroglyphics chiseled in the solid rock, describing one of the oldest civilizations in the world. In Uxmal, Mexico, Palenque and Copan are tablets, friezes, bas-reliefs, facades and hieroglyphics, though inferior to the Egyptian in mimetic art, still of the highest order, considering this to be the product of the neolithic age, and the length of time since the separation from the home roof-tree. The Egyptians were the only ones of the ancient people who embalmed their dead. According to the French Historian, Lucien Biart, the Zapotecs and Chicimecs of the Mexican Valley embalmed their chiefs, and if we may believe this same author, the caves of the Cordilleras are vast museums as full of interest us the catacombs of Rome. That the Americans mummified their dead is proved by mummies having been found in Peru and in the northwestern part of Patagonia. Dr. Aq. Ried, the discoverer, has deposited one in the museum of Ratisbon, Bavaria, and another was sent to the Smithsonian Institution.[F]
This mummy led to the remark of Professor Alexander Winchell in his “Pre-Adamites.” “The humid atmosphere, unlike that of Peru, leads to the inference that the mummification of the dead was practiced under some controlling motive which must have been inherited from ancestors dwelling in a more propitious clime, and which even the dripping meteorology of Patagonia was insufficient to eradicate.”
The Egyptians were accurate astrologers and astronomers. They accurately calculated the eclipses and the reappearance of stars whose journey would require over a thousand years, and the pyramids are set to the cardinal points in Egypt and in Mexico. In the City of Mexico is the great calendar stone of solid porphyry weighing fifty tons. It was brought many leagues across a broken country, without beasts of burden, and Bustamente states that a thousand men were employed in its transportation. From it we learn that the Aztecs or Toltecs were astronomers and astrologers and calculated eclipses and knew the solstices of the sun. They divided the year into eighteen months of twentydays each, and, like the Egyptians, had five complementary days to make out the three hundred and sixty-five, and every fifty-two years they added thirteen (twelve and a half) days for a leap year to make the solar and civil years agree. Like the Persians and Egyptians, a cycle of fifty-two years or “An Age,” was represented by a serpent, so prominent in mythology. Their astrological year was divided into months of thirteen days each, and there were thirteen years in their indications, which contained each, three hundred and sixty-five periods of thirteen days.
It is also worthy of note that their number of lunar months of thirteen days was contained in a cycle of fifty-two years, with the intercalation of thirteen days (twelve and a half,) should correspond exactly with the number of years in a great Sothic Period of the Egyptians, viz. 1461. Is it reasonable to suppose that this strange affinity with Egyptian civilization was accidental, or that a Turanian people independently evolved itself into a counterpart of Hamitic Berbers? The stone is not modern; it is not written in Aztec characters but in Toltec, a people whom the Aztecs supplanted, and they claimed that the knowledge was not original with them, but acquired from the Mayas who had preceded them in Yucatan. The ideographic paintings of the Aztecs preserve traditions of the creation of the world, a universal flood, the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of man; and that a single man and woman saved themselves in a boat which landed at Mount Colhuacan, and that all their children were born deaf and remained so until a dove, one day, from the topof a tree, taught them each in a different tongue.
All Aztec traditions, without exception, insist that they came from a far-off island called “Azatlan” (probably Atlantis.) Dr. Lapham, in his “Antiquities of Wisconsin,” claims that the Aztecs were identical with the Mound-builders, and locates Azatlan in Wisconsin, on account of the large number of effigy mounds there; and Dr. Foster in his “Prehistoric Races” pictures these mounds called Azatlan; but the Aztec painting published by Gemelle Carera in hisGiro del Mondo, has hieroglyphics representing their departure from Azatlan in canoes and on rafts, after their confusion of tongues, and ateocalli, or temple by the side of a palm tree, of which neither condition can be true of Wisconsin.
Max Muller, the greatest authority on philology, says that of all indices to the mysteries of the ancient world, language is the most satisfactory, and theonlyevidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historic periods. If we class the languages of the world into groups according to cognation, we find the Aryan languages comprising the Indian, Persian (Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin group (Italian, Wallacian, Provencal, French, Portugese and Spanish), Slavonic (Russian), Teutonic (English), and the Keltic or Welsh, of which the oldest is the Sanskrit and Zend. The Semitic group comprises the Hebrew, Phœnician, Assyrian and Arabic, while the Babylonian and Chinese stand alone. The Aryan and Semitic form a class known asthe inflectional, and are the only languages of the world that are adapted to and possess a literature, and that have advanced the progressof the world in religion, arts or sciences. Though springing from a common center, they have grammatical structures that prevent the one being derived from the other. The Semitic branched southward and westward, and was the language of the Chaldee, Arab, Hebrew and Egyptian, the latter sometimes classed as Hamitic. The Chinese is an organic language, monosyllabic, and destitute of all grammar. The nouns have no number, declension or cases, and the verbs are without conjugation through moods, tenses and persons. All Mongoloid that reached America must have done so by Behring Strait, and all such races, or descendants of such races, would undoubtedly have kept a trace of their parental language. If the Aztecs were derived from Mongoloids, we should expect a monosyllabic language, but on the contrary, the Aztec language has more diminutives and augmentatives than the Italian, and its substantives and verbs are more numerous than in any other language.
Another proof of its wealth is, that when missionaries first went among them, they found no trouble in expressing abstract ideas like religion, virtue, etc. The consonants most used are l, t, x, z; next the sound of tl and tz. L is of most frequent occurrence, but is never found at the beginning of a word. The Aztec language, sweet and harmonious to the ear, has no sharp or nasal sounds; the penultimate of most of its words is long. The language is rich, exact and expressive, as is proven in the “Natural History” by Dr. Hernandez, who describes twelve hundred plants, two hundred birds, many quadrupeds, reptiles, insects, metals, etc., and wasable to call each by a separate name, given by the Indians. Poets and orators there were by the hundred, and their written inaugurals make as interesting reading as we hear from many of our legislators, many of which were translated by the French scholar, Lucien Biart, who died since these pages were begun.
If Max Muller is correct, then there can be no kinship between the Mongols and Aztecs, and if they ever had communication with other people, it must have been from the east. The Sanskrit word for God, isDevan; the Latin,Deus; the Greek,Oeoo; and the Aztec,Teotl. This similarity of sound and spelling might be purely accidental, and on the other hand, it might have something of a long kinship to identify it. The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls was a ruling passion with the Aztec. This may have been the fruition of all polytheistic religions, or it might have been the retention of primordial culture, for we know the Egyptian embalmed his dead, lest the dissolution of the body would destroy the soul also.
The greatest desecration that could befall the ancient Greeks and Romans was the refusal of burial, because the soul of him thus uncared for wandered thenceforth as a disembodied ghost.
We read in Homer’s Iliad how the dead Patroclus comes to the sleeping Achilles, and tries in vain to grasp him with loving arms, but the soul, like smoke, flits away below earth. How Hermotimos the seer used to go out of his body, till at last, the soul, coming back from a spirit journey, found that his wife had burnt his body on a funeral pile, and that he had become abodyless ghost. How Odysseus visits the bloodless ghosts in Hades, and the shadows of the dead in Purgatory wondered to see the body of Dante there, which stopped the sunlight and cast a shadow.
How, in Virgil’s Æneid, the love-maddened Queen Dido could wish no greater curse to befall Æneas, than that his body should lie unburied on the plain, and even the old boatman, Charon, in Hades, refused to ferry across the River Styx the shades of any who lacked burial while on earth.
This idea of the phantom life of souls as shades and shadows, constitutes the higher philosophy of the transcendental metaphysics of the ancient Greeks, whose exponent was Pythagoras. Religious fervor was strong in the Aztec, and from his devotion to formality, Atlantis must have been the home of ceremonial religion. The wordsAtlasandAtlantichave no satisfactory etymology in any language known to Europe. These are not Greek and cannot be referred to any European language, but in the Nahuatl or Toltecan language we find the radicala,atl, which signifies water, man and top of the head. From these come a series of words, such asatlan, on the border of, or amid the water, from which comes the adjectiveAtlantic. Therefore the Atlantic Ocean must have received its name from the continent Atlantis before the cataclysm. We have alsoAtlaca, to combat, to be in agony. It also means to hurl, to dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. From the island of Atlantis, the Atlas mountain in northern Africa would seem to the inhabitants to be hurled out of the water, hence its namewas probably given by these same people, as the word occurs in no other language.
On the map of Mexico today are more than a hundred towns with the same combination of letters ofatlorlanwhich shows that the combination is an essential part of the Aztec language. There are many traditions that are receiving light from the nineteenth century that crystalizes them into accepted history. For twenty-six centuries has the siege of Troy stood out in profile as the model epic of the world, but, on account of its antiquity, of doubted veracity. Now Dr. Schlieman’s excavations seem destined yet to find the funeral pyre of Patroclus, surrounded by the remains of Trojan captives. And even later, the French archaeologist M. Marcel Dieulafay has brought to light the ancient city of Susa, and we may even now behold the Palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon, whose foundations were laid by Xerxes I. 485 B. C.; and now after twenty-three centuries, the student may take his Bible in his hand, turn to the Book of Esther and read, while the guide in the ancient capital of Persia points to the spot where Mordecai sat, to that corner where Haman was hanged, and to this court where the lovely Esther was crowned queen, and whence the sorrowing Vashti departed, as the unfortunate Hebe, cup-bearer of Jove, before the victorious Ganymede.
Plato records the sad fate of Atlantis nearly five hundred years B. C., and Solom had recorded it in a poem two hundred years earlier. Plato says the expedition against Egypt took place during the reign of the Athenian Kings, Cecrops and Erectheus, and, according to the “Marble of Paros,” these Kings ruled 1582 B. C.and 1409 B. C., which is not a great deal earlier than the siege of Troy. Though this is very ancient history, we have as much right to believe Plato’s history as Homer’s, if it can be well established.
The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg is the greatest authority on the translation of Aztec literature, and he maintains that the oldest certain date in the Nahuatl or Toltecan language reaches back to 955 B. C., and as the Toltecs dwelt some time in the country of Zibalba before they dispossessed the Colhuas, their migration must have begun more than a thousand years B. C. The Colhuas were the remnant of those who had escaped the terrible calamity of Atlantis. To those who reject the theory here offered, I would say the field is large and inviting to any whose insight into the past can help solve the problems of the origin of the ancient Mexicans.