The Conquest of Mexico/Volume 1/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
WHEN William Hickling Prescott wrote the Conquest of Mexico he gave to literature something more than the vivid and polished narrative of one of the most romantic episodes in the world's history. The comparatively high stage of cultural development attained by the Mexicans, together with their traditions of a still more glorious past, fired his imagination, and he attempted to give also a critical survey of their civilisation and to trace its rise and source. To this subject he devoted his first six chapters and a long appendix, and it is with that portion of his work that this introductory note is in the main concerned. As regards his narrative, comparatively little has come to light during the last eighty years which would tend to modify his account of the operations of the Spaniards in Mexico and the adjoining countries to the south. The discovery by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall of the Crónica de la Nueva España by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, a personal friend of Cortés, in the Biblioteca Nacional of Spain (a work which had been used by the historian Herrera, but to which Prescott had not direct access), indicates that the account of the siege of Mexico city is not always correct in detail. Moreover, A. P. Maudslay, who has devoted much study to the vexed question of the topography of the city, has been able to prove that the camp of Alvarado was pitched, not in the vicinity of the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan, but close to that of Tlaltelolco. But, however important such details may be for the intensive study of a single episode, they should be viewed in their proper proportion to the whole work. From this aspect it may be claimed that few historical treatises have stood the test of time so triumphantly. The achievement becomes the more remarkable, and it is in no sense of apology that this point of view is introduced, when the work is regarded as a compilation from an enormous mass of material, much of it biassed, by a man who was practically blind.
With the archæological and ethnological chapters of Prescott's work, however, the case is somewhat different. The remarkable advance made in the various branches of Anthropological science during the last eighty years has wrought a profound difference, not only in the point of view from which primitive communities are regarded, but also in the methods of approaching the problems which they present. Furthermore, the discoveries made since Prescott's day in Southern Mexico and Central America have entirely revolutionised the current opinions regarding Mexican culture. But, before proceeding to a short critical examination of Prescott's archæological conclusions, it is only just to summarise briefly the condition of Anthropological (in the widest sense) knowledge in the year 1843, which saw the publication of the Conquest of Mexico. It will be seen then that his fine imagination, combined with a singular sense of proportion, carried him far nearer the truth than might legitimately be expected in the case of one equipped only with the meagre critical apparatus of the period. In his attempt to illustrate and elucidate the various features of Mexican culture, he cast his net very wide. He draws parallels from Ethnology, Classical Archæology, Egyptology, and Oriental Studies all more or less still in embryo; and, like any other author who employs the comparative method, is to a great degree at the mercy of his material. The result shows a singular clarity of vision and critical balance.
In 1843 Anthropology was not yet a science. It is true that the Societé ethnologique de Paris was formed in 1839, but it was not a success. The Ethnological Society of London (of which the Royal Anthropological Institute is the direct successor in unbroken line) was founded in the same year in which Prescott published the Conquest of Mexico. In 1859, sixteen years later, was established the Societé d'anthropologie de Paris, and it is a significant commentary upon the trend of thought of the period, when religion and science were still at loggerheads, that Broca, the founder, "was bound over to keep the discussions within legitimate and orthodox limits, and a police agent attended its sittings for two years to enforce the stipulation." It is true, nevertheless, that the first foundations of modern Anthropology had been laid. The pioneers of biological classification, Linnaeus, Buffon, Blumenbach, had already given to the world works of enormous importance; but de Quatrefages, Virchow, and Broca were yet to come. The principles of evolution had been foreshadowed in the writings of Lamarck, Cuvier, and Saint Hilaire; but the great scientific epoch, marked by the works of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Huxley, was yet to dawn. So much for Anthropology on the physical side; when we seek for scientific authors who have tried to deal with mankind on a broad basis, both from the physical and cultural points of view, we find only Prichard and, perhaps, Desmoulins. It is difficult to believe that Prescott had not at least read Prichard's earlier works, though he never quotes him, but the monumental Natural History of Man was not published until 1843.
So far I have mentioned names which serve to illustrate the embryonic stage of Anthropological science in Prescott's day; I come now to the authors whose researches have a more direct bearing upon the particular problems with which he was confronted. Prescott's method is, from one point of view, an early attempt at comparative ethnology, and, to judge from the material at his command, a very successful attempt. But the time of Edward Burnett Tylor, who first raised that branch of Anthropology to a science, was not yet, and one wonders what would have been the effect upon Prescott's acute brain if he had but skimmed the pages of The Early History of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture (1871) which have so profoundly influenced modern thought. Again, Sociology, as we now understand it, was practically non-existent. Comte, it is true, was available; but Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Bachofen, Morgan (the founder of Sociology as a science) and M'Lennan had not produced the works which render their names memorable. Psychology, too, was in its infancy, and it was not brought into true relationship with ethnological studies until the time of Bastian, who was the first to insist upon its Anthropological significance. And Bastian was only seventeen when the Conquest of Mexico was published. The question of primitive religion had not really been faced in Prescott's day. An unbending, though sincere, church was still blind to the many pagan survivals which it embodied, and which brought some of its rites into direct relation with the ceremonies of primitive peoples, still regarded by a large majority as the direct inspiration of a personal devil. While insisting upon the purely symbolic nature of much of its own ceremonial, it could see no symbolism in the practices of the pagan. It could not even realise how easily symbolism becomes degraded to magic, how easily magic becomes rationalised to symbolism. That, even in one social complex, the symbolism of the educated is magic in the eyes of the uneducated. Yet, in spite of the atmosphere of his day, Prescott maintains a surprising equilibrium in his treatment of Mexican religion, though he had no full appreciation of its composite nature nor of the inner meaning of much of its ceremonial. To summarise, it is perhaps not a great exaggeration to say that Prescott, on the whole, drew little more, in the way of Anthropological criteria, from his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, than was afforded him by the combined works of Hesiod, Herodotus, Aristotle, Strabo, and Lucretius.
Classical studies, limited practically to the field of Greek archæology, were in advance of Anthropology in 1843, but differed greatly both in extent and in kind from those studies as pursued to-day. For many years, even after Prescott's time, Greek art, Greek literature, Greek culture was regarded as something of itself, remote from the rest of humanity, a virgin birth, an Athena springing in full panoply from the brain of the Greek Zeus. Indeed, at any rate from the point of view of art, the Greek tradition became a tyranny, a Pope, an obsession. Emancipation from that obsession has come only in a very recent period; and it is only the growth of Anthropological knowledge which has opened the eyes of the Western world to the value of the artistic productions of the Orient, of Ancient America, of Africa, and Polynesia. In 1843 the range of Greek archæology was confined to the study of coins, which had been the subject of more or less systematic research since the time of Ekhel, to the descriptions of the remains of temples furnished by the accounts of travellers, to inscriptions discovered and copied by scholars, and to certain notable examples of Greek art, such as the sculptures from the Parthenon, from Egina, and from Bassae. Upon this material, combined with the identification of many sites by Leake, scholars such as Müller and Boeckh laid the foundation of Greek historical archæology. But it was after the publication of the Conquest of Mexico that Layard opened up a new era in archaeological investigation by his excavations at Nimroud, and though the researches of Newton and Wood advanced the science still further, it was not until the results of Schliemann's labours at Hissarlik (1871) were given to the world that our knowledge of the early ages of Greece began. It is true that Greek literature could furnish Prescott with details as to Greek manners and customs, religion and polity; but the prevailing trend of thought, which regarded the culture of Classical Greece as something apart, inhibited their full use as Anthropological parallels. It is only of quite recent years that the intellectual courage of Ridgeway enforced the view that even the Greek colossus had his feet firmly rooted in the ooze of primal superstitions and usages.
In 1843 Egyptology was in the slack water between the great wave, already past, of Champollion, and the greater wave of Lepzius and Brugsch yet to come. For ethnological parallels Prescott had at his disposal the works of classical writers and of Wilkinson; and the works of Wilkinson, though in advance of his age, were strongly influenced by classical tradition. In fact, in this branch of archæology also, the solvent of Anthropological criteria had yet to be applied to the complex. It is unnecessary to labour the point. In a note Prescott writes: "It is impossible not to be struck with the great resemblance, not merely in a few empty forms, but in the whole way of life, of the Mexican and Egyptian priesthood." In truth, the sole resemblance is the elemental resemblance which one organised priesthood bears to another, based upon an identity of function. The institution of religious communities devoted to the service, or associated with the cult, of certain major or minor divinities, is not the peculiar characteristic of Mexico and Ancient Egypt.
With the position of Oriental Studies in Prescott's day, it is almost possible to deal adequately within the limited scope of an introduction such as this. It will be sufficient, perhaps, to refer only to Buddhism, to which Prescott makes more than one allusion. This great philosophy, comparatively simple in its original form, but in course of time elaborated in some regions into a religion with a pantheon of "gods" and an organised priesthood (against both of which it was, in its inception, a revolt), was known to the western world only in the form of a mere travesty before the researches of Hodgson revealed to Europe the Sanskrit texts upon which the knowledge of to-day is primarily based. Hodgson did not leave Nepal until 1843, but it is true that he had published certain most illuminating papers before the Conquest of Mexico appeared. However it is clear that Prescott had no knowledge of them. In any case, it was not until 1844 that Burnouf, basing his work upon Hodgson's discoveries, published his Introduction à l'Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien, which has a valid claim to be considered the first, even approximately, correct presentation of the subject as a whole to the Western world. Two quotations will suffice to show the class of information from which Prescott drew his material in this subject. In a note referring to the "virgin birth" of Huitzilopotchli he quotes Milman: "Buddh, according to a tradition known in the West, was born of a virgin." It is regarded as an historical fact to-day that the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, was the son of Suddhodana, a chieftain of the Sakya, and his wife Maya. And, though the circumstances of his birth have been surrounded with certain miraculous phenomena, there exists no oriental tradition that he was the son of a virgin. Again, Prescott writes: "The probability of. . . communication with Eastern Asia is much strengthened by the resemblance of sacerdotal institutions," to which is the footnote: "And monastic institutions were found in Tibet and Japan from the earliest ages." Now the first monastery in Tibet was founded at Sam-yas, and the order of lamas instituted, by Padma-Sambhava in 749 A.D., which can hardly be regarded as belonging to the "earliest ages." Furthermore in matters of detail, the Tibetan "monks" stand in far closer relationship to those of the Church of Rome than to the Aztec priesthood. In fact there is practically nothing in common between them save the elementary conception of a class of men devoted professionally to the service of certain divinities.
Such then was the critical equipment which Prescott could bring to bear upon the problems, historical, ethnographical, sociological, and arch{{ae]]ological, presented by the Valley of Mexico. With regard to the problems themselves, it must be realised that the very material upon which he had to work was in the main literary. The products of the spade and, in the tropical lands, of the axe and machete were comparatively insignificant, and could hardly, at that period, be brought into true relation with literary evidence. Above all, the existence of the great Maya culture, extending over that portion of Central America divided to-day between Northern Honduras, Guatemala, British Honduras, and the Mexican States of Chiapas and Yucatan, was still unrealised by writers on America. Prescott refers, almost uneasily, to the pioneer researches of Dupaix and de Waldeck at Palenque and Uxmal, and suggests tentatively that the "mysterious" ruins there may have been erected by the Toltecs after their expulsion from Mexico. The work of Stephens and Catherwood he mentions in the preliminary notice to his appendix, but even this notable book did not provide him with the evidence which he needed in order to see the culture of the Mexican Valley in its proper light. Indeed it was not until the year 1881 that an investigation of Maya remains, upon strictly scientific lines, was begun, an investigation which was destined to wreak a sea-change upon the ideas prevailing concerning the culture of Mexico and Central America.
The foundations of Maya studies were laid by the discovery, twenty years after the appearance of Prescott's work, of a manuscript history of Yucatan by Fray Diego de Landa, dated 1566. In 1881 A. P. Maudslay made his first expedition to Central America, the first of no less than seven during the next twenty years, throughout which he explored, cleared forest, measured, photographed, and obtained casts. The publication of his results, completed in 1892, crowned a task justly described by Dr. S.G. Morley, one of the leading authorities on Maya archæology at the present time, as "the greatest archæological investigation ever accomplished in the Maya field," and gave to the world a work which the same authority distinguishes as "the most important publication by which the science has been enriched." The application of Maudslay's researches to Landa's Relacion afforded scholars, such as Förstemann, Goodman, Seler, and Bowditch (to mention a few of the pioneers), material for the works which have revealed not only the nature and extent of Maya culture, with its remarkable chronological system, but also the intimate bearing which it has upon the culture of the Mexican Valley.
Maya culture seems to have had its origin in the tropical country on the Atlantic slope lying between the northern boundary of the Petén district of Guatemala and the extreme north of Honduras. The commencement of its most glorious period, though not yet settled beyond dispute, owing to the difficulty of correlating the native chronological system with our own, is assigned by the most trustworthy authorities to the first or second century of our era. After some three centuries, the older sites were abandoned, and the centre of Maya "civilisation," which had spread both west and north-east, was transferred to Yucatan. In a westerly direction its effect was destined to produce notable consequences. By way of Oaxaca the Maya culture, with its calendar, religion, art, and craftsmanship, reached the Mexican Valley, becoming ever more and more attenuated on the journey; but there it took root, and, fostered by immigrants from the more virile, though less cultured, north, flourished as something almost specifically different. The main authorities whose works were available to Prescott connected the beginning of culture with the Toltec, with whom were associated the god Quetzalcoatl, the calendar, agriculture, the arts of stone-cutting and pottery, and the great pyramids at Cholula and San Juan Teotihuacan. Now the name Quetzalcoatl is a literal translation of one of the most important Maya gods, Kukulkan. The Mexican calendar is a much simplified form of that of the Maya, and, unlike its parent, is unfitted to deal with long periods of time. Further, the recent excavations at Teotihuacan have revealed a style of art obviously based upon that of the Maya.
To judge from the evidence afforded by the scanty excavations conducted on serious lines in the Mexican Valley, three main periods may be distinguished in its culture-history. First a primitive period, the remains of which show affinities with those of the Tarascans of Michoacan and the early inhabitants of the Panuco Valley. From this archaic culture there is a transition to remains of the Toltec period. This Toltec period was evidently of long duration, and the remains of the subsequent Aztec period represent a very short space of time. The Toltecs were immigrants from the north, a region where culture was at a comparatively low stage, and where no buildings on pyramidal substructures, so characteristic of the Maya, are found. They were the first wave of Nahuatl-speaking invaders, whose tongue reaches as far north as the State of Montana, to break upon the Mexican Valley. Here they came into contact with that offshoot of the Maya culture which had spread up from the south and east, and proved such good foster-mothers that in Mexico it became associated with their name. Other groups of Nahuatl speakers followed, and finally came the Aztec, a band of skinclad hunter-warriors, armed with a weapon hitherto unknown in Mexico, the bow. In the last stages of the Toltec period, a development in religious thought led to the introduction of human sacrifice, a practice which appears to have been alien to the early Maya culture. This was adopted by the more recently arrived Nahuatl tribes; trouble and discontent arose in the Valley, and culminated with the rise of the Aztec and a wholesale migration of tribes who had preserved the Toltec blood and tradition in purer form. Numbers of them appear to have wandered forth through Puebla, Vera Cruz, and Tabasco, and even to have reached Yucatan, where their art is certainly reflected in the later monuments at Chichén Itzá. Where they passed or settled they sowed the seeds of their culture, so that the works of art and craftsmanship, which, in the days of the later Aztec "Empire," were sent to Mexico in the form of tribute from Puebla and Vera Cruz, may be reckoned among the principal treasures of the capital.
The culture of the Valley of Mexico, as the Spanish Conquistadores found it, was therefore obviously complex. Here, successive waves of nomads had come in contact with a form of civilisation higher than their own, and had absorbed it according to their capacity, adopting a settled form of life, and devoting themselves to agriculture and the practice of arts and crafts. But they did more than receive, they modified, interpreted, and imposed. To take an instance from the Aztec alone; like most Nahuatl tribes, they brought with them a tribal god, Huitzilopotchli, who was regarded as their personal leader, a deity who was, at any rate originally, a star-god (though later he became associated with the sun), a god of hunting and war. When they settled in the Valley, and turned to agriculture and craftsmanship, they adopted whole-heartedly the worship of Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl, the two gods of the Valley-dwellers who presided respectively over these departments of life. I mention two only of the local deities who held a place in the Aztec pantheon, but there were very many more, and their number tended to increase as the Aztec grew in power and came into contact with tribes outside the alley. The Aztec, in fact, showed a remarkable tolerance and catholicity in religious matters, and if they insisted upon the paramountcy of their own tribal god, Huitzilopochtli, it is at least significant that, when the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan was built, the shrine of Tlaloc, the old fertility-god of the Valley, shared the summit with that of the tribal god of the conquerors. A detailed analysis of the component elements of Mexican culture as found by the Spaniards is far beyond the scope of a mere introduction, but a very illuminating illustration is afforded by funerary rites. There were two methods practised in the disposal of the dead—inhumation and cremation. The method depended upon the cause of death. Men killed in battle or on the stone of sacrifice (in the Aztec mind there was no distinction, either was the fitting death of a warrior) were cremated. Men drowned, or dying of dropsical affections, were buried. Prescott knew that these two methods existed, but did not understand their true significance. The souls of the cremated were supposed to be translated to the Paradise of the Sun, with whom, in the days of Aztec domination, Huitzilopochtli was identified. The souls of the buried entered the paradise of Tlaloc, which was regarded as hardly less desirable. The modern anthropologist sees in this dual practice a clear indication that the immigrant worshippers of Huitzilopochtli habitually practised cremation, while the early dwellers in the Valley, who acknowledged the supremacy of Tlaloc, buried their dead unburned. And the evidence of archeology supports this conclusion. Prescott saw clearly the composite nature of Mexican beliefs and ritual, and calls attention to it in more than one passage; but he had not the material which could lead him to an analysis of the complex.
A good illustration of this fact is afforded by his treatment of the Mexican calendar. He hardly seems to realise that the Mexican method of dating the solar year was based upon the ritual calendar of 260 days, which bears every sign of being much older than the solar reckoning. To this ritual calendar he refers as a "lunar reckoning," adding "though nowise accommodated to the revolutions of the moon." And indeed the first phrase is an absolute misnomer, since the system which he describes bears no relation whatever to lunar reckoning of time. The ritual calendar, or Tonalmatl, of the greatest importance in the art of divination, was based upon the combination of twenty signs with the numerals one to thirteen. Since 20 and 13 have no common factor, it is evident that 20 x 13=260 days must pass until the combination of a given numeral and sign repeats itself. Now the Tonalmatl reckoning ran continuously and concurrently with the 365-day period of the solar year. The year was distinguished by the sign and numeral of the days on which it began, and, since 20 (the number of the signs) when divided into 365 leaves 5, it follows that each year bore a sign fifth in order from the previous year. And since 5 occurs four times in a series of 20 without remainder, it follows that there were only four signs which could give their name to a year. With regard to the numerals, 365 is divisible by 13 with 1 as remainder. Hence each year bore a numeral one in advance of the preceding year, and all the numerals appeared in the year-names. The same numeral would not appear in combination with the same sign until after the lapse of 4x13=52 years, and this was the lesser cycle of the Mexicans. But, as Prescott records, a greater cycle of 104 years was recognised, though he did not know the reason. Concurrently with the solar year, the Mexicans observed the synodical revolution of the planet Venus, the heliacal rising of which, occurring on five of the day-signs combined with the thirteen numerals, coincided with the solar year only once in 104 years. The observation of Venus-periods, which seems to be of earlier date than that of solar periods, afforded a check upon sun-time, and may have provided the Americans with a means of correcting their calendar at long intervals. Certainly they appear to have had no system of intercalary days such as suggested by Prescott. The word "Americans" has been used above advisedly, since the dating systems mentioned were all practised by the Maya long before the Toltec entered Mexico. A full discussion of the calendar as we now know it is impossible in an introduction such as this. I have dealt with the subject at length in my Mexican Archæology, and I would refer those interested in the subject to that book. Three points only need be mentioned here. Prescott refers to two series of gods associated with the count of days; nine "Lords of the night," and thirteen "Lords of the day." In addition it may be stated that the Tonalmatl was usually arranged in five columns of fifty-two days each. To each of the longitudinal and transverse columns a presiding god was assigned. The name of Huitzilopochtli, the tutelary god of the Aztec, is almost entirely absent, and when it does appear, it displaces the name of an earlier deity. This fact affords cogent evidence that this god was a late addition to the Mexican pantheon. The second point is this. Prescott states that the four signs used in denominating the years represented the four elements. The statement is definitely incorrect; the signs in question were associated with the four "world-directions," north, east, south, and west, which (often appearing as five, with the addition of the centre) constituted so important an element in Mexican, as it had in Maya, ceremonial. Finally it is worth pointing out that the occurrence of the number thirteen as a basic element in the American calendar, for which no satisfactory explanation is yet forthcoming, differentiates it from any other system of time-reckoning at present known.
As regards his treatment in general of Mexican religion, almost the only criticism which can in fairness be levelled at Prescott is that he might perhaps have made more extended use of Sahagun. But the principal weakness of this section of his work is due to the fact that the modes of thought and belief characteristic of primitive peoples had not been sympathetically and systematically studied. Prescott did not understand that the victim in the great festival to Tezcatlipoca was regarded as the actual incarnation of the god himself; and that, just as it was necessary that the human vehicle of the divine soul should be a youth of bodily perfection, so it was of paramount importance that he should be killed, and the soul transferred to another perfect body, before the least trace of physical infirmity or waning vigour impaired the virility of the deity upon whom the general prosperity, not only of the tribe, but of mankind in general, was supposed to depend.
Nor was it only in the case of Tezcatlipoca that the victim was identified with the god; the same underlying idea may be observed in certain sacrifices to the goddesses of fertility and to Xipe. Viewed in the light of these facts, the ceremonial cannibalism which accompanied some of the festivals becomes far less repulsive, since it was an instance of the practice of eating the god which is still very widely distributed throughout mankind, and which appears in a form more intelligible to Prescott in the ceremonies at which small images of the deity, made of maize-flour and other vegetable products, were devoured by the worshippers.
Prescott omits many of the sacrificial rites, since he could see in them nothing but the promptings of vain and bloodthirsty cruelty. In actuality, however, they have another aspect. Thus, the women sacrificed to the Fertility-goddesses were usually decapitated, a rite symbolising the reaping of a maize-ear, and supposed, in some mystic manner, to ensure a good harvest. In a sacrifice to Xipe, at which the victim was shot to death with arrows, the blood which streamed upon the ground represented, and was believed to promote, a copious rainfall, and so to bring prosperity to the fields.
One important feature of Mexican religion, however, Prescott saw clearly, the very close connection between it and war, and the highly ceremonial nature of the latter. The Aztec believed that only by the hearts of men offered in sacrifice could the vigour of the gods be sustained. War therefore was a necessity, and they fought not to kill but to capture. This belief, which, as Prescott points out, more than once saved the Spaniards from annihilation, coloured the whole of Aztec policy towards the surrounding peoples with whom they came in contact. They made no attempt to weld the neighbouring tribes into a solid empire, for that, if successful, would have brought peace. In the days of their greatest power they exercised no more than a loose suzerainty over the dependent cities, which were left very much to their own devices, provided that they were punctual in the payment of tribute. This lack of political control almost encouraged revolt, and revolt on the part of a tributary was by no means unwelcome to the Aztec, since it afforded an opportunity of obtaining more victims for sacrifice.
It would be possible to show that Prescott, as in his treatment of Mexican religion, so too in his account of the inheritance of chiefly rank (which appears to rest upon a matriarchal basis) and social observances generally, did not always perceive the true significance of the practices which he recorded; but space is lacking. The study of his introductory pages, read in the light of the knowledge of his time, leaves the most critical reader wondering, not only at Prescott's indefatigable industry, but at the sanity and perspicacity of his judgment. Actual errors are very few in number, and two only will be mentioned here. Prescott rightly interprets the name "Anahuac" as signifying "Near the Water," but he is wrong in identifying the "Water" with the lakes in the Valley. The name Anahuac was never employed to signify the Valley of Mexico; the "Water" is the sea, and the word was applied to two districts; Anahuac Ayotlan was the name given to the region of the Pacific coast around Tehuantepec, while Anahuac Xicalanco denominated the southern portion of Vera Cruz and the coast of Tabasco. The other mistake is found in his description of the Mexican Teocalli. He states that the flights of steps by which they were ascended were situated at an angle of the pyramid. In this he has apparently been misled by the illustrator of the account of the "Anonymous Conqueror," who himself misinterpreted the author's description. In truth the shrine at the summit of the Teocalli was approached by a single broad stairway in the centre of one of the faces of the pyramid (in the case of the great Teocalli, the western face). By this stairway the ceremonial processions mounted to the shrines, leaving it, as they reached each of the tiers of which the pyramid was composed, to encircle the building in their course.
Allusion has been made more than once to the even balance of Prescott's critical faculty, which was indeed in advance of his time, but the same praise cannot be given to his artistic judgment, which is fully in accord with the ideas then prevailing. Those who are acquainted with such works of art as the Zouche, Fejérváry-Mayer and Bologna codices, will certainly not endorse his statement that the Egyptians "handled the pencil more gracefully than the Aztecs, were more true to the natural forms of objects. . ." For, even though these manuscripts are probably not the work of Aztec artists in the narrowest sense of the word, they are at any rate Mexican, and were produced at a period when Aztec power was at its height. Moreover, in this passage, Prescott is using the term Aztec as equivalent to Mexican. Most surprising is his endorsement of Torquemada's views on the low artistic value of Mexican sculpture, followed by the comment that only when the old beliefs lost their hold upon the native mind "it opened to the influences of a purer taste; and, after the Conquest, the Mexicans furnished many examples of correct, and some of beautiful, portraiture." Yet in his defence it may be pleaded that only in the last few years has the indigenous art of America been rated at its proper value.
Prescott's appendix, dealing with the analogies borne by Mexican culture to that of the Old World, and its origin, cannot be discussed fully within the limits of an introduction. The question is broader, and far more complicated, than even he realised. Even to-day there hardly exists the material upon which a conclusive judgment could be founded. But there is no doubt as to the merit of the appendix. Since the discovery of Mexico the most fantastic theories have been spun in the attempt to relate the culture revealed by the Conquest with that of the Old World. Prescott's method is truly Herodotean. He refers practically to all such theories propounded up to his day, applying to them a cool and fatal judgment. Since his time, many works and treatises have been written in the same strain, backed by the wider material which the growth of Anthropological and Oriental studies has rendered available. It is perhaps noteworthy that nearly all such works have been produced by authors whose special knowledge is confined to some branch of Old-World archæology, but not by those who have studied in detail the archæology of America. In any case the result to-day may be summed in the very words used by Prescott in the two paragraphs which conclude this portion of his great work, with the rider that the contribution of Asia to America cannot yet be proved to be more than a racial element arriving at a time so remote that it possessed no culture worthy of the name to bring with it.
In conclusion I should like to add a personal note of appreciation regarding the illustrations which constitute so notable a feature of this edition. Regarded as artistic productions, their merit is evident to all who read these volumes. But they possess the further merit of being by far the most correct interpretations of Ancient Mexican costumes, ornaments, and warlike equipment, which have yet supplemented the text of a history of that country. I know the many weeks of real research which Mr. Keith Henderson spent at the British Museum, collecting details from manuscripts, sculptures and pottery, and archaeological works. From the material thus laboriously acquired, a vivid imagination and a cunning hand have produced upon the work of a great historian a pictorial commentary which is not only in every way worthy of it, but even adds to its value.