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native mythology; and all writers, ancient and modern, unite in conveying to us a picture of the grossest bigotry, sensuality, and crime, as characterizing both priests and laymen. Gambling and licentiousness are still openly encouraged in many cases by the precept and example of the curas, and it may be unhesitatingly affirmed, that after centuries of the so-called Christianizing of Mexico and Yucatan by the emissaries of Spain, both are nearly as destitute of any practical knowledge of the Christian religion, as when Cortez and his followers first landed on the American continent.

Considerable sameness characterizes the numerous remains of the ruined cities of Yucatan, so that the description of the remains of Uxmal comprises much that is again met with on other ancient sites. Yet each presents some peculiar and interesting feature of its own. At Kabah, for example, after describing some of the most beautiful and finely designed sculptures which were met with, Mr. Stephens remarks: "There are on this side of the camino real the remains of other buildings, but all in a ruinous condition, and there is one monument, perhaps more curious and interesting than any that has been presented. It is a lonely arch, of the same form with all the rest, having a span of fourteen feet. It stands on a ruined mound, disconnected from every other structure, in solitary grandeur. Darkness rests upon its history, but in that desolation and solitude, among the ruins around, it stood like the proud memorial of a Roman triumph. Perhaps, like the arch of Titus, which at this day spans the Sacred Way at Rome, it was erected to commemorate a victory over enemies."

It was here also that one of the finest carved lintels was extracted from the ruins only to experience the mortifying fate already alluded to. "All the lintels over the doorway," says the traveller, "are of wood, and all are still in their places, mostly sound and solid. The

doorways were encumbered with rubbish and ruins That nearest the staircase was filled up to within three feet of the lintel; and, in crawling under on his back, to measure the apartment, Mr. Catherwood's eye was arrested by a sculptured lintel; which, on examination, he considered the most interesting memorial we had found in Yucatan. On my return that day from a visit to three more ruined cities entirely unknown before, he claimed this lintel as equal in interest and value to all of them together. The next day I saw them, and determined immediately, at any trouble or cost, to carry them home with me; but this was no easy matter. Our operations created much discussion in the village. The general belief was that we were searching for gold. No one could believe that we were expending money in such a business without being sure of getting it back again;" fortunately, though the original no longer exists, careful drawings of it were made, and a large etching illustrates the narrative of the indefatigable explorers' labours.

A critical investigation of these remains of primitive American art, leads to the conviction that no conclusion can be deduced from the architecture or sculpture of the ancient Aztecs or Tolteckans, in reference to their origin. The style of their sculpture and architecture is alike peculiar, and obviously of native origin. We are well content to assume that the builders of Shinar, and even of Thebes, worked without models, seeing that we believe them to have been the first of human builders; and no greater difficulty can possibly be felt, in assuming that some stray wanderers from the Noahic family group, being at length cast on the shores of the New World, established themselves there, and in the course of centuries grew up to be a numerous race, with stone palaces, instead of rude huts and wigwams, and with temples and pyramids not greatly inferior to those reared by the first idolators for the rites of Belus.

CHAPTER IV.

AMERICAN HIEROGLYPHICS

World! wrongly called the New- this clime was old
When first the Spaniard came, in search of gold.
Age after age its shadowy wings had spread,
And man was born and gathered to the dead;
Cities arose, ruled, dwindled to decay,
Empires were formed, then darkly swept away:
Race followed race, like cloud-shades o'er the field,
The stranger still to strangers doomed to yield;
Till to invading Europe bowed their pride,
And pomp, art, power, with Montezuma died.

MICHELL

WHILE we find in the remains of primitive American art abundant evidence of its native origin, we discover in it no less obvious traces of the derivation of its originators from the one centre of the human race. Their arts, mythology, science, and traditions, are all their own; yet in inost of them we discover the common features pertaining to the works of the same class throughout the human family. In their science, and in their mythic traditions, especially, we detect singularly definite traces of the familiarity of their fathers with the true history of the race, and of the world, as it was known to the postdeluvian patriarchs. An affinity was naturally looked for at first, between their works and those of the oldest races of history. India was referred to for analogies in illustration of their mythology, and Egypt for a counterpart to their architecture and symbolic inscriptions. Where the idea of such affinities was already firmly established in the minds of the investigators, the most was naturally made of very slight analogies. But more

extensive study of the remains of the ancient Americans has served to dissipate many of the theories formerly entertained in regard to their origin, and models; and it is now very generally acknowledged that we possess no clue to the history of those first steps by which the vast continent of America was reclaimed from the solitude of an unpeopled wilderness.

Such a state of belief is the most favourable for unprejudiced study; and now, that American archæologists are fully alive to the interest which attaches to the history of the continents they have inherited from older races of the human family, much new and valuable light may be looked for, in reference to those obscure and lost chapters of the world's history relating to its first peopling, and the rise of its native arts and wild mythology.

The discovery of hieroglyphic inscriptions on the monuments of the Aztecs, was one of the most tempting analogies to the earliest relics of the Old World which the curious explorers of ancient history found in the New World. At first sight there seemed ground whereon to rear a basis of truth for mastering the whole mystery, and even for obtaining the clue to the then unknown secret of the older hieroglyphs of Egypt. It was assumed, somewhat hastily, that hieroglyphic writing was every where one and the same. Supposing it to be a purely representative system of picture-writing, it seemed to require little more than a tolerably clear understanding of the intended representations of objects in order to master the whole. The Aztecs had indeed just such a hieroglyphic system in use; and their picture-writing still survives on many of the monuments of Mexico and Yucatan. There is good reason to believe that it was no more than an abbreviated system of literal representation, such as the Egyptian system of hieroglyphic writing was universally believed to be prior to the discoveries of the present century, and such as it doubtless was in its origin, though its pictorial representa

tions have gradually passed into symbolic or arbitrary signs. An illustration of the mode adopted by the Aztecs in making use of their picture-writing on extraordinary occasions, is shown in the account preserved by the early Spanish discoverers of America. We learn from their historians, that the Indian scouts despatched to bring back word of the strange invaders who threatened the kingdom. of Montezuma, informed their master of the arrival and appearance of Cortez and his followers, by sketches of the Spaniards, their ships, horses, firearms, &c. Such was no doubt the origin both of the American and Egyptian systems. They were at first no more than rude methods of conveying an idea of objects by miniature representations of them. The earliest refinement on this would consist chiefly in the most natural mode of abbreviation, by substituting a part for the whole. In this way the crown became the symbol of the king, and the inkhorn of the scribe; or again, a male and female figure together stood for mankind, an ox with three lines below it for oxen, or many oxen, &c. But the symbolic writing of America retained much more of its primitive pictorial character than that of Egypt; and there is certainly nothing in its details to justify any idea of its correspondence to the Nile monuments. "The most prominent feature," says Humboldt, "among the analogies observed in the monuments, the manners, and traditions of the people of Asia and America, is that which the Mexican mythology exhibits in the cosmogonical fiction of the periodical destructions and regenerations of the world. This fiction, which connects the return of the great cycles with the idea of the renewal of matter, deemed indestructible; and which attributes to space what seems to belong only to time, goes back to the highest antiquity. The sacred books of the Hindoos, especially the Bhagavata Pourana, speak of he four ages, and of the pralayas, or cataclysms, which at different epochs have destroyed the human race.

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