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Notes

coincidence! But who shall vouch for the authenticity of the tradition? The bishop flourished towards the close of the seventeenth century. He drew his information from hieroglyphical maps, and an Indian MS., which Boturini in vain endeavoured to recover. In exploring these, he borrowed the aid of the natives, who, as Boturini informs us, frequently led the good man into errors and absurdities; of which he gives several specimens. (Idea, p. 116 et seq.)—Boturini himself has fallen into an error equally great, in regard to a map of this same Cholulan pyramid; which Clavigero shows, far from being a genuine antique, was the forgery of a later day. (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 130, nota.) It is impossible to get a firm footing in the quick sands of tradition. The further we are removed from the Conquest, the more difficult it becomes to decide what belongs to the primitive Aztec, and what to the Christian convert.

Page 387 (⁵).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, lib. i, cap. 6; lib. 6, cap. 28, 33. Torquemada, not content with the honest record of his predecessor, whose MS. lay before him, tells us, that the Mexican Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. (Monarch. Ind., lib. 6, cap. 31.) The ancient interpreters of the Vatican and Tellerian Codices add the further tradition, of her bringing sin and sorrow into the world by plucking the forbidden rose (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi., explan. of PI. 7, 20); and Veytia remembers to have seen a Toltec or Aztec map, representing a garden with a single tree in it, round which was coiled the serpent with a human face! (Hist. Antig., lib. i, cap. I.) After this we may be prepared for Lord Kingsborough's deliberate conviction, that the "Aztecs had a clear knowledge of the Old Testament, and, most probably of the New, though somewhat corrupted by time and hieroglyphics!"—Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 409.

Page 387 (⁶).—Ante, vol. i. p. 38.

Page 388 (¹).—Veytia, Hist. Antig., lib. i, cap. 15.

Page 388 (²).—Ibid., lib. i, cap. 19. A sorry argument, even for a casuist. See, also, the elaborate dissertation of Dr. Mier (apud Sahagun, lib. 3, Suplem.), which settles the question entirely to the satisfaction of his reporter, Bustamente.

Page 388 (³).—See, among others. Lord Kingsborough's reading of the Borgian Codex, and the interpreters of the Vatican (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi., explan. of PI. 3, 10, 41), equally well skilled with his Lordship,—and Sir Hudibras,—in unravelling mysteries:

"Whose primitive tradition reaches.
As far as Adam's first green breeches."

Page 388 (⁴).—Antiquites Mexicaines, exped. 3, PI. 36. The figures are surrounded by hieroglyphics of most arbitrary character, perhaps phonetic. (See also, Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 3, cap. I;—Gomara, Crónica de la Nueva España, cap. 15, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.) Mr. Stephen considers that the celebrated "Cozumel Cross," preserved at Merida, which claims the credit of being the same originally worshipped by the natives of Cozumel, is, after all, nothing but a cross that was erected by the Spaniards in one of their own temples in that island after the Conquest. This fact he regards as "completely invalidating the strongest proof offered at this day, that the Cross was recognised by the Indians as a symbol of worship." (Travels in Yucatan, vol. ii. chap. 20.) But admitting the truth of this statement, that the Cozumel Cross is only a Christian relic, which the ingenious traveller has made extremely probable, his inference is by no means admissible. Nothing could be more natural than that the friars in Merida should endeavour to give celebrity to their convent by making it the possessor of so remarkable a monument as the very relic which proved, in their eyes that Christianity had been preached at some earlier date among the natives. But the real proof of the existence of the Cross, as an object of worship in the New World, does not rest on such spurious monuments as these, but on the unequivocal testimony of the Spanish discoverers themselves.

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