Notes
to the same purpose (Mexico in 1827 [London, 1828], vol. ii. p. 196), which agrees with verbal accounts I have received of the same spot.
Page 103 (2).—"Grados hechos de la misma peña tan bien gravadas y lizas que parecían espejos." (Ixtlilxochitl, MS., ubi supra.) The travellers just cited notice the beautiful polish still visible in the porphyry.
Page 103 (3).—Padilla saw entire pieces of cedar among the ruins, ninety feet long, and four in diameter. Some of the massive portals, he observed, were made of a single stone. (Hist. de Santiago, lib. 11, cap. 81.) Peter Martyr notices an enormous wooden beam, used in the construction of the palaces of Tezcuco, which was one hundred and twenty feet long by eight feet in diameter! The accounts of this and similar huge pieces of timber were so astonishing, he adds, that he could not have received them except on the most unexceptionable testimony.—De Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 10.
Page 104 (1).—It is much to be regretted that the Mexican government should not take a deeper interest in the Indian antiquities. What might not be effected by a few hands drawn from the idle garrisons of some of the neighbouring towns, and employed in excavating this ground, "the Mount Palatine," of Mexico! But, unhappily, the age of violence has been succeeded by one of apathy.
Page 104 (2).—"They are doubtless," says Mr. Latrobe, speaking of what he calls, "these inexplicable ruins," "rather of Toltec than Aztec origin, and, perhaps, with still more probability, attributed to a people of an age yet more remote." (Rambler in Mexico, let. 7.) "I am of opinion," says Mr. Bullock, "that these were antiquities prior to the discovery of America, and erected by a people whose history was lost even before the building of the city of Mexico.—Who can solve this difficulty? "(Six Months in Mexico, ubi supra.) The reader who takes Ixtlilxochitl for his guide will have no great trouble in solving it. He will find here, as he might probably in some other instances, that one need go little higher than the Conquest for the origin of antiquities which claim to be coeval with Phœnicia and Ancient Egypt.
Page 107 (1).—"Porque las paredes oian." (Ixtlilxochitl.) A European proverb among the American aborigines looks too strange, not to make one suspect the hand of the chronicler.
Page 108 (1).—MS. de Ixtlilxochitl. The manuscript here quoted is one of the many left by the author on the antiquities of his country, and forms part of a voluminous compilation made in Mexico by father Vega, in 1792, by order of the Spanish government.—See Appendix, Part 2, No. 2.
Page 108 (2).—"Al Dios no conocido, Causa de las causas."—MS. de Ixtlilxochitl.
Page 108 (3).—Their earliest temples were dedicated to the Sun. The Moon they worshipped as his wife, and the Stars as his sisters. (Veytia, Hist. Antiq., tom. i. cap. 25.) The ruins still existing at Teotihuacan, about seven leagues from Mexico, are supposed to have been temples raised by this ancient people in honour of the two great deities.—Boturini, Idea, p. 42.
Page 109 (1).—MS. de Ixtlilxochitl. "This was evidently a gong," says Mr. Ranking, who treads with enviable confidence over the "suppositos cineres," in the path of the antiquary.—See his Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, etc., by the Mongols (London, 1827), p. 310.
Page 110 (1).—"El horror del sepulcro es lisongera cuna para el, y las funestas sombras, brillantes luces para los astros." The original text and a Spanish translation of this poem first appeared, I believe, in a work of Granados y Galvez. (Tardes Americanas [Mexico, 1778], p. 90, et seq.) The original is in the Otomie tongue, and both, together with a French version, have been inserted447
