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Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) Researches Volume II. (London: 1814) |
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Caleb Atwater's 1820 excerpt | Ethan Smith's 1823 book | Sacred Book of the Indians?
Joseph Smith? | Book of Mormon? | Lord Kingsborough | Henry A. Stebbins' Lectures
(note: illustrated plate links are to von Humboldt's images in the 1810 folio edition)
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R E S E A R C H E S Concerning THE INSTITUTIONS & MONUMENTS OF The Ancient Inhabitants OF A M E R I C A. with Descriptions & Views OF SOME OF THE MOST Striking Scenes in the C O R D I L L E R A S: Written in French by ALEXANDER DE HUMBOLDT, & Translated into English by Helen Maria Williams. VOL. II. 
______ L O N D O N. Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, J. Murray & H. Colburn. |
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1 IN THE KINGDOM OF QUITO. PLATE XXIV. When Tupoc-Yupanqui and Huayna-Capac, father of the unfortunate Atahualpa, had completed the conquest of the kingdom of Quito, they not only caused magnificent roads to be formed on the ridge of the Cordilleras, but, in order to facilitate the communications between the capital and the most northerly provinces of their empire, they ordered their inns (tambos), magazines, and houses, for the prince and his suite, should be built on the road from Cuzco to Quito, at regular distances. These tambos, and houses of the Inca, to which other travellers have given the name of palaces, existed during several ages in that part of the great road which leads from Cuzco to Caxamarca. The country is indebted to the last conquerors of the race of Manco-Capac only for the construction of those 2 edifices, of which we now find the ruins from the province of Caxamarca, the southern limit of the ancient kingdom of Quito, as far as the mountains of Los Pastos. Among these edifices one of the most celebrated, and the best preserved, is that of Callo, or Caio, described by La Condamine, Don Jorge Juan, and Ulloa, in their travels to Peru. The descriptions of those travellers are very imperfect; and the drawing of the house of the Inca, made by Ulloa, is so unlike the plan on which it was really constructed, that we are almost tempted to think it is merely imaginary. In the month of April, 1802, in an excursion to the volcano of Cotopaxi, M. Bonpland and myself visited these slight remains of Peruvian architecture, and I sketched the edifice represented in the 24th plate. On my return to Quito, I showed my sketches, and the plate contained in Ulloa's Travels, to some very old monks of the order of St. Augustin. No person was better acquainted than themselves with the ruins of Callo, which were situate on ground belonging to their convent; they formerly inhabited a country house in the neighbourhood; and they assured me, that since 1750, and even before that period, the Inca's house was always in the same state as at present. It is probable, that Ulloa wished to represent a monument repaired; and that he imagined the existence of inside 3 walls, * wherever be saw heaps of rubbish, or accidental elevations of the ground. His plan exhibits neither the real form of the apartments, nor the four great outer doors, which must necessarily have existed from the time when the edifice was built. We have already observed, that the elevated plain of Quito extends itself between the double ridge † of the Cordillera of the Andes; and is separated from the plain of Llactacunga and Hambato by the heights of Chisinche and Tiopullo, which, like a dyke, extend crossways from the eastern to the western ridge, or from the basaltic rocks of Ruminnahui toward the slender pyramids of the ancient volcano Ilinissa. From the top of this dyke, which divides its waters between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, we discover, in an immense plain covered with pumice stone, the Panecillo of Callo, and the ruins of the house of the Inca Huayna Capac. The Panecillo, or sugar-loaf, is a conic hillock about fourscore metres high, covered with small bushes molina, spermacoce, and cactus. The natives are persuaded that this hillock, which resembles a bell, and is perfectly regular in its figure, is a tumulus, or one of those numerous __________ * Historical Journey to South America, vol. 1, p. 387, pl. 18. † See vol. 13, p. 231, and my Collection of Astronomical Observations vol. I, p. 309. 4 hills, which the ancient inhabitants of tills country raised for the interment of the sovereign, or some other distinguished personage. It is alleged, in favour of this opinion, that the Panecillo is wholly composed of volcanic rubbish; and that the same pumice stone, which surrounds its basis, is found also on its summit. This reason might appear little conclusive in the eyes of a geologist; for the back of the neighbouring mountain of Tiopullo, which is much higher than the Panecillo, is covered also with great heaps of pumice stone, probably owing to ancient eruptions of Cotopaxi and Ilinissa. We cannot doubt, but that in both Americas, as well as in the north of Asia, and on the banks of the Boristhenes, mounds raised by men, and real tumuli of an extraordinary height, are to be seen. Those which are found amid the ruins of the ancient town of Mansiche, in Peru, are not much lower than the sugar-loaf of Callo. It is nevertheless possible, and this opinion even appears to me the most probable, that the latter is a volcanic hillock, isolated on the vast plain of Llactacunga, and to which the natives have given a more regular form. Ulloa, whose authority is of great weight, seems to have adopted the opinion of the natives: he even thinks, that the Panecillo is a military monument; and that it served as a watch tower, to discover what passed in the country, and to ensure the prince's safety 5 on the first alarm of an unforeseen attack. In the state of Kentucky we equally observe, near ancient fortifications of an oval form, very lofty tumuli, containing human bones, and covered with trees, which Mr. Cutter supposes to be a thousand years old. * The Inca's house is a little to the south-west of the Panecillo, three leagues distant from the crater of Cotopaxi, and about ten leagues to the south of the city of Quito. This edifice forms a square, each side of which is thirty metres long; four great outer doors are still distinguishable, and eight apartments, three of which are in good preservation. The walls are nearly five metres high and one thick. The doors, similar to those of the Egyptian temples; the niches, eighteen in number in each apartment, distributed with the greatest symmetry; the cylinders for the suspension of warlike weapons; the cut of the stones, the outer side of which Is convex, and carved obliquely, all remind us of the edifice at Cannar, which is represented in the twentieth plate. I saw nothing at Callo of what Ulloa calls grandeur and majesty: but what appears to me much more interesting is the uniformity of construction, which is observed in all the Peruvian monuments. It is impossible to examine attentively a single edifice of the time of __________ * Carey's Pocket Atlas of the United Stairs, 1790, p. 101. 6 the Incas, without recognising the same type in all the others that cover the ridge of the Andes, on an extent of more than four hundred and fifty leagues, from a thousand to four thousand metres above the level of the ocean. It might be said, that a single architect constructed this great number of monuments, so strictly were this people of mountaineers attached to their domestic habits, their civil and religious institutions, and the form and distribution of their buildings. It will be easy in some future day to ascertain from the drawings contained in this work, whether buildings exist in Upper Canada, as the learned author of the Noticias Americanas asserts, which in the cut of their stones, the, form of their doors and small niches, and the distribution of their apartments, display traces of the Peruvian style; and this inquiry is so much the more interesting to those, who devote themselves to historical researches, as we know from sure testimony, that the Incas built the fortress of Cuzco after the model of the most ancient edifices of Tiahuanaco, situate in 17 degrees 12 minutes south latitude. The stone made use of for the house of Huayna-Capac, mentioned by Cieca * under the name of aposentos de Mulahalo, is a rock of volcanic origin, a burnt and spongy porphyry with basaltic basis. It was probably ejected by __________ * Chronica del Peru, cap. 41 (ed. de 1554, p. 108) 7 the mouth of the volcano of Cotopaxi, for it is the same with the enormous blocks, which I found in great numbers on the plains of Callo and Mulalo. As this monument appears to have been constructed in the beginning of the 16th century, the materials employed in it prove, that it is a mistake to consider as the first eruption of the Cotopaxi that which took place in 1533, when Sebastien de Belalcazar made the conquest of the kingdom of Quito, The stones of Callo are cut in parallelopipedons, not all of the same size, but forming courses as regular as those of Roman workmanship. If the illustrious author of the History of America * could have seen a single Peruvian edifice, he certainly would not have asserted, "that the Indians took the stones just as they were raised out of the quarries; that some were triangular, some square, some convex, some concave;" and that the too highly vaunted art of this people consisted only in the arrangement of these shapeless materials. During our long abode in the Cordilleras of the Andes, we never found any structure resembling that which is termed Cyclopean. In every edifice that dates from the time of the Incas, the front of the stones is very skillfully cut, while the back part is rugged, and often angular. An excellent observer, Don Juan Larea, has __________ * Robertson, Hist. of America, vol. 3, p. 432. 8 remarked, that, in the walls at Callo, the interstices between the outer and inner stones are filled with small pebbles cemented with clay. I did not observe this circumstance; but I have represented it in the 23d plate, from a sketch of Mr. Larea's. We see no vestige of floor, or roof; but we may suppose, that the latter was of wood. We are also ignorant, whether the edifice had originally more than a single story, or not; as the height of its walls has been diminished no less by the avidity of the neighbouring peasantry, who take away the stones for their own use than by the earthquakes, to which this unfortunate country is continually exposed. It is probable, that the edifices, which I have heard called at Peru, Quito, and as far as the banks of the river of Amazons, by the name of Inga-Pilca, or buildings of the Inca, do not date farther back than the 13th century. Those of Vinaque and Tiahuanaco were constructed at a remoter period; as were the walls of unbaked bricks, which owe their origin to the ancient inhabitants of Quito, the Puruays, governed by the conchocando, or king of Lican, and by guastays, or tributary princes. It were to be wished, that some learned traveller could visit the banks of the great lake of Titicaca, the province of Collao and more especially the elevated plain of Tiahuanaco, which is the centre of an ancient civilization in South America. On that 9 spot there still exist some remains of those edifices, which Pedro de Cieca * has described with great simplicity; they seem never to have been finished, and, at the arrival of the Spaniards, the natives attributed the construction of them to a race white and bearded men who inhabited the ridge of the Cordilleras long before the foundation of the empire of the Incas. American architecture, we cannot too often repeat, can cause no astonishment, either by the magnitude of its works, or the elegance of their form; but it is highly interesting, as it throws light on the history of the primitive civilization of the inhabitants of the mountains of the new continent. I have sketched, 1st, the plan of the Inca Huayna-Capac's house: 2d, a part of the inner wall of the most northerly apartment, seen on the inside: 3d, the same part seen on the outside, but within the court. In the external walls, opposite the doors of the apartments, we find, instead of niches, openings looking to the adjacent country. I shall not decide, whether these windows were originally niches (hocos), and opened in times subsequent to the conquest, when this edifice served as a dwelling to some Spanish family. The natives on the contrary believe, that they were made for the purpose of observing, whether an enemy would attempt an attack against the Inca's troops. __________ * Cieca, cap. 105, p. 255. |
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10 SEEN FROM THE P L A I N O F T A P I A. PLATE XXV. The mountain is here sketched as it displays itself from the arid plain of Tapia, near the village of Lican, the ancient residence of the sovereigns of Quito, before the conquest of the Inca Tupac-Yupanqui. From Lican to the summit of Chimborazo is nearly five leagues in a straight line. The 16th plate represents this colossal mountain surrounded with a zone of perpetual snow, which, near the equator, maintains itself at four thousand eight hundred metres above the level of the sea. The 25th plate represents Chimborazo as we saw it after very heavy falls of snow, on the 24th of June, 1802, the day immediately following that of our excursion toward the summit. It appeared to me interesting, to give a precise idea of the stupendous 11 aspect of the Cordilleras, at the two epochas of the maximum and minimum of the height of the snows. Travellers who have approached the summits of Mont Blanc and Mont Rose are alone capable of feeling the character of this calm, majestic, and solemn scenery. The bulk of Chimborazo is so enormous, that the part which the eye embraces at once near the limit of the eternal snows is seven thousand metres in breadth. The extreme rarity of the strata of air, across which we seethe tops of the Andes, contributes * greatly to the splendour of the snow, and the magical effect of its reflection. Under the tropics, at a height of live thousand metres, the azure vault of the sky appears of an indigo tint. &134; The outlines of the mountain detach themselves from the sky in this pure and transparent atmosphere, while the inferior strata of the air, reposing on a plain destitute of vegetation, which reflects the radiant heat, are vaporous, and appear to veil the middle ground of the landscape. The elevated plain of Tapia, which extends to the East as far as the foot of the Altar and of Condorasto, is three thousand metres in height, nearly equal to that of Canigou, one of the highest summits of the Pyrenees. A few plants __________ * Political Essay on New Spain, vol. 1, p. 77. &134; See my Geography of Plants, p. 17. 12 of schinus molle, cactus, agave, and molina, are scattered over the barren plain: and we see in the foreground lamas (camelus lacma) sketched from nature, and groups of Indians going to the market of Lican. The flank of the mountain presents that gradation of vegetable life, which I have endeavoured to trace in my chart of the Geography of plants, and which may be followed on the western top of the Andes from the impenetrable groves of palm trees to the perpetual snows, bordered by thin layers of lichens. At three thousand five hundred metres absolute height, the ligneous plants with coriaceous and shining leaves nearly disappear. The region of shrubs is separated from that of the grasses by alpine plants, by tufts of nerteria, valerian, saxifrage, and lobelia, and by small cruciferous plants. The grasses form a very broad belt, covered at intervals with snow, which remains but a few days. This belt, called in the country the pajonal, appears at a distance like a gilded yellow carpet. Its colour forms an agreeable contrast with that of the scattered masses of snow; and is owing to the stalks and leaves of the grasses burnt by the rays of the sun in the seasons of great drought. Above the pajonal lies the region of cryptogamous plants, which here and there cover the porphyritic rocks destitute of vegetable earth. Farther on, at the limit 13 of the perpetual ice, is the termination of organic life. However stupendous the height of Chimborazo, its summit is four hundred metres lower than the point, at which M. Gay-Lussac, in his memorable aerial excursion, made experiments so important both to meteorology and the knowledge of the laws of magnetism. The natives of the province of Quito preserve a tradition, according to which a summit of the eastern ridge of the Andes, now called the Altar (el Altar), part of which fell down in the fifteenth century, was formerly loftier than Chimborazo. In Boutan, the highest mountain of which English travellers have given us the measure, the Soumounang is only 4419 metres (2268 toises) high: but, according to the assertion of Colonel Crawford, * the loftiest summit of the Cordilleras of Thibet is above twenty-five thousand English feet, or 7617 metres (3909toises). If this calculation be founded on an accurate measurement, a mountain of central Asia is a thousand and ninety metres higher than Chimborazo. To the eye of the real geologist, who, engaged in the study of the formations has been accustomed to contemplate nature in all her greatness, the absolute height of mountains is an object of little importance; nor will he be astonished, if hereafter, in __________ * Jameson’s System of Mineralogy, vol. 3, p. 329. 14 some part, of the globe, a summit be discovered, the elevation of which exceeds as much that of Chimborazo, as the highest mountain of the Alps surpasses the summit of the Pyrenees. A distinguished architect, who unites to the knowledge of the monuments of antiquity a strong feeling of the beauties of nature, Mr. Thibault, has undertaken to make the coloured drawing, the engraving of which forms the principal ornament of tills work. The sketch I traced on the spot had no other merit than that of exhibiting with accuracy the outlines of Chimborazo, determined by measurements of the angles. The truly natural figure of the whole, and of its various parts, has been scrupulously preserved. In order that the eye may follow the gradation of the plans, and form an idea of the extent of the plain, Mr. Thibault has animated the scene by figures grouped with great taste. To record the services of disinterested friendship is a grateful task. |
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15 ACCORDING TO THE AZTECK OF MYTHOLOGY. PLATE XXVI. The most prominent feature 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 the four ages, and of the pralayas, or cataclysms, which at different epochas __________ * Herman, Mythologie der Griechen, Th. 2, p. 332. 16 have destroyed the human race. * A tradition of five ages, analogous with that of the Mexicans, is found on the elevated plain of Thibet. † If it be true, that this astrological fiction, which is become the basis of a particular system of cosmogony, originated in Indostan, it is probable also, that it passed thence by the way of Iran and Chaldea to the western nations. It cannot but be admitted, that a certain resemblance exists between the Indian tradition of the Yougas and the Kalpas, the cycles of the ancient inhabitants of Etruria, and that series of generations destroyed, which Hesiod characterizes under the emblem of four metals. The nations of Culhua, or Mexico, says Gomara, ‡ who wrote about the middle of the sixteenth century, believe according to their hieroglyphical paintings, that, previous to the sun which now enlightens them, four had already been successively extinguished. These four suns are as many ages, in which our species has been annihilated by inundations, by earthquakes, by a general conflagration, and by the effect of destroying tempests. After the destruction of __________ * Hamilton and Langles Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Imperial library, p. 13: Asiatic Researches, vol. 2, p. 171: Moor's Hindu Pantheon, p. 27 and 101, † Georgi Alphab. Tibetanum, p. 220. ‡ Gomara, Conquista, fol. cxix. 17 the fourth sun, the world was plunged in darkness profound during the space of twenty-five years Amid this profound obscurity, ten years before the appearance of the fifth sun, mankind was regenerated. The gods, at that period, for the fifth time, created a man and a woman. The day, on which the last sun appeared, bore the sign tochtli (rabbit); and the Mexicans reckon eight hundred and fifty years from this epocha to 1552. Their annals go back as far as the fifth sun. They made use of historical paintings (escritura pintada) even in the four preceding ages; but these paintings, as they assert, were destroyed, because in each age every thing ought to be renewed. According to Torquemada, * this fable of the revolutions of time, and the regeneration of nature, is of Tolteck origin: it is a national tradition common to that group of people, whom we know under the name of Toltecks, Chichimecks, Acolhuans, Nahuatlacks, Tlascaltecks, and Aztecks; and who, speaking the same language, have been flowing from north to south since the middle of the sixth century of our era. On examining, at Rome, the Codex Vaticanus, No. 3738, copied in 1566 by a Dominican monk, __________ * Torquemada, vol. 1. p. 40; vol. 2, p. 83. VOL. XIV. 18 Pedro de los Rios, * I found the Mexican drawing represented in plate 26. This historical document is so much the more curious, as it indicates the duration of each age by signs of which we know the meaning. In P. Rios's Commentary, the order in which the catastrophes took place is entirely confounded; the last, which is the deluge, is there considered as the first. The same error is found in the works of Gomara, Clavigero, † and the greater part of the Spanish authors; who, forgetting that the Mexicans placed their hieroglyphics from right to left, beginning at the bottom of the page, necessarily inverted the four destructions of the world. I shall point out this order, as it is represented in the Mexican paintings of the Vatican library, and described in a very curious history written in the Azteck tongue, fragments of which have been preserved by the Indian Fernando de Alvar Ixtlilxochitl. ‡ The testimony of a native writer, and the copy of a Mexican painting made on the spot a short time after the conquest, merit undoubtedly more confidence than the recital of the Spanish historians. __________ * See vol. 13, p. 191, and 201. † Storia Antica di Messico, tom. 2, p. 57. ‡ Gama, § 62, p. 97: Boturini, Cat. del Museo, § 8, n. 13. 19 This diversity, of which we have just stated the reason, relates only to the order of the destructions; for the circumstances, by which each of them was accompanied, are related in the same manner by Gomara, Pedro de los Rios, Ixtlilxochitl, Clavigero, and Gama. First cycle. Its duration is 13x400+6 = 5206 years. This number is indicated on the right in the lower picture by nineteen rounds, thirteen of which are surmounted by a feather. We have already observed, speaking of the calendar, that the hieroglyphic of the square of twenty is a feather; and that, like the nails of the Etruscans and the Romans, * mere rounds indicated among the Mexicans the number of the years. This first age, which corresponds to the age of justice (Sakia Youga) of the Hindoos, was called Tlaltonatiuh, age of the Earth; it is also that of the giants (Qzocuilliexeque, or Tuinametin), for the historical traditions of every nation began by combats of giants. The Olmecks or Hulmecks, and the Xicalancks, two nations that preceded the Toltecks, and who boasted of high antiquity, pretended to have found them on arriving in the plains of Tlascala. † According to the Pouranas, Bacchus, or the young Rama, gained also his __________ * Tit. Liv. Hist. lib. 7, c. 3 (ed. Gesneri, 1735, tom. 1, p. 461). † Torquemada, vol. 1, p. 37. 20 first victory over Havana, king of the giants of the Island of Ceylon. The year over which the sign ce acatl presided was a year of famine, that destroyed the first generation of men. Tills catastrophe began on the day 4 tiger (nahui ocelotl); and it is probably on account of the hieroglyphic of this day, that, according to other traditions, the giants, who did not perish by famine, were devoured by those tigers (tequanes), the appearance of which was dreaded by the Mexicans at the end of every cycle. The hieroglyphic painting represents a malignant spirit descending on the earth to root up the grass and the flowers. Three human figures, among which we easily recognise a woman, by her headdress formed of two small tresses resembling horns, * hold in their right hands a sharp-edged instrument, and in their left, fruit, or ears of corn. The spirit, that announces famine, wears one of those rosaries, † which, from time immemorial, have been in use in Thibet, China, Canada, and Mexico; and which have passed from the east to the Christians of the west. Though among all the nations of the Earth the fiction of the giants, of the Titans, and of the Cyclops, appears to indicate the conflict of the elements, or the state of __________ * Plate XV, No. 3-7, 3. † Plate XIV, No. 8. 21 the Globe on its issuing from Chaos, we cannot doubt, but that, in both Americas, the enormous fossil skeletons of animals spread over the surface of the Earth, have had a great influence on mythological history. At St. Helen's Point, to the north of Guayaquil, are enormous remains of unknown cetaceous animals. Peruvian traditions also state, that a colony of giants, who mutually destroyed each other, landed at this very point. Bones of mastodontes, and of fossil elephants belonging to a species that has disappeared from the surface of the Globe, abound in the kingdom of New Granada, and on the ridge of the Mexican Cordilleras. * The plain also, which at two thousand, seven hundred metres height extends from Suacha to Santa Fe de Bogota, bears the name of the Field of the Giants. It is probable, the Hulmecks boasted, that their ancestors had combated the giants on the fertile plain of Tlascala, because we find on this spot molar teeth of mastodontes and elephants, which in every country the people take for teeth of men of colossal stature. Second cycle. Its duration is 12x400+4 = 4804 years. This is the age of fire, Tletonatiuh, or the red age, Tzonchichilteck. The god of fire, Xiuhteuctli, descends on the Earth in the year __________ * Guvier, Mém. de l'Instit., Class of Physical and Mathem. Sciences, year 7, p. 14. 22 governed by the sign ce tecpatl, the day nahui quiahuitl. As the birds alone were able to escape the general conflagration, tradition states, that all men were transformed into birds, except, one man, and one woman, who saved themselves in the recess of a cavern. Third cycle. The age of wind, or air, Ehecatonatiuh. Its duration is 10x400+10 = 4010 years. The catastrophe took place on the day 4 wind (nahui ehecatl) of the year ce tecpatl. The drawing represents four times the hieroglyphic of the air or the wind, ehecatl. Men perished by hurricanes; and some were transformed into apes. These animals did not appear in Mexico before this third age. I am ignorant who is the divinity, that descends on the Earth aimed with a sickle. May it not be Quetzalcohuatl, the god of the air? and may not the sickle signify, that the hurricane roots up the trees, as if they had been felled? I doubt, however, whether the yellow stripes indicate, as the Spanish commentator pretends, the form of clouds driven by the tempest. Monkeys are in general less frequent in the warm part of Mexico, than in South America. These animals undertake distant migrations, when, driven by hunger, or the severity of the weather, they find themselves compelled to abandon their primitive abode. I know countries in the mountainous parts of Peru, the inhabitants of which remember 23 the time, when new colonies of monkeys settled themselves in such and such a valley. Did the tradition of the five ages contain a trait of the history of animals? Could it designate a year, in which hurricanes, and earthquakes caused by volcanoes, induced the monkeys to make incursions into the mountains of Anahuac? In this cycle of tempests, two men only survived the catastrophe, by fleeing to a cavern, as at the end of the preceding age. Fourth cycle. The age of water, Atonatiuh, the duration of which is 10x400+8 = 4008 years. A great inundation, which began the year ce calli, the day 4 water (nahui alt), destroyed mankind. This is the last of the great revolutions, which the world has undergone. Men were transformed into fish, except one man and one woman, who saved themselves in the trunk of an ahahuete, or cupressus disticha. The drawing, represents the goddess of water, called Mutlalcueje, or Chalchiuheje, and considered as the companion of Tlaloc, descending toward the earth. Coxcox, the Noah of the Mexican, and his wife Xochiquetzal, are seated in a trunk of a tree covered with leaves, and floating amidst the waters. These four ages, which are also designated under the name of suns, contain together eighteen thousand and twenty-eight years; that is to say, six thousand years more than the four 24 Persian ages described in the Zend-Avesta. * I nowhere find how many years had elapsed from the deluge of Coxcox to the sacrifice of Tlalixco, or till the reform of the Azteck calendar; but, however near we may suppose these two periods, we still find that the Mexicans attributed to the world a duration of more than twenty thousand years. This duration certainly forms a contrast with the great period of the Hindoos, which consists of four millions three hundred and twenty thousand years; and still more with the cosmogonical fiction of the Thibetans, according to which mankind already compute eighteen revolutions, each of which has several padu, expressed by numbers of sixty-two ciphers. † It is nevertheless remarkable, that we find an American people, who, according to the same system of the calendar in use among them on the arrival of Cortez, indicate the days and the years in which the world underwent great catastrophes farther back than twenty ages. Le Gentil, Bailly, and Dupuis, ‡ have ingeniously explained the duration of the great cycles __________ * Anquetil, Zend-Avesta, vol. 2, p. 352. † Thibet. Alphab. p. 472. ‡ Le Gentil, Voy. dans los Indes, vol. 1, p. 235; Bailly, Astron. Ind., p. lxxxviii and 212: Bailly, Hist de l'Astron. Am., p. 76; Depuis, Orig. des Cultes, vol. 3, p. 164. 25 of Asia. I have never been able to discover any peculiar propriety in the number of 18028 years. It is not a multiple of 13, 19, 52, 60, 72, 360, or 1440, which are the numbers found in the cycles of the Asiatic nations. If the duration of the Mexican four suns were longer by three years; and if for the numbers 5200, 4804, 4010, and 4008 years, the numbers 5206, 4807, 4009, and 4009, were substituted, we might suppose, that these cycles originated from a knowledge of the lunar period of nineteen years. But whatever be their real origin, it does not appear less certain, that they are fictions of the astronomical mythology, modified either by an obscure remembrance of some great revolution, which our planet has undergone; or according to the physical and geological hypotheses, to which the aspect of marine petrifactions and of fossil bones has given rise, even among nations the most remote from civilization. On examining the paintings represented in the 26th plate, we find, in the four destructions, the emblems of four elements, earth, fire, air, and water. These same elements were also indicated by the four hieroglyphics * of the years, rabbit, house, flint, and cane. Calli, or house, considered as the symbol of fire, reminds us of the __________ * See vol. 13, p 180; and Siguenza, in Gemelli, Giro del Mondo, tom. 6, p. 65 26 usage of a northern people, who, from the inclemency of the climate, were obliged to warm their huts; and the idea of Vesta (______), which, in the most ancient system of the Greek mythology, represents at once the house, the hearth, and the domestic fire. The sign tecpatl, flint, was dedicated to the god of the air, Quetzalcohuatl, a mysterious personage, who belongs to the heroic times of Mexican history, and of whom we have had occasion to speak several times in the course of this work. According to the Mexican calendar, tecpatl is the sign of the night, which, at the beginning of the cycle, accompanies the hieroglyphic of the day, called ehecatl, or wind. Perhaps the history of an aerolite, which fell from the sky on the summit of the pyramid of Cholula, dedicated to Quetzalcohuatl, led the Mexicans to establish this singular connexion between a flint (tecpatl) and the god of the winds. We have observed, that the Mexican astrologers have given to the traditions of the destructions and regenerations of the world an historic character, in denoting the days and years of the great catastrophes according to the calendar of which they made use in the 16th century. A very simple calculation might lead them to find the hieroglyphic of the year, which preceded a given period 5206, or 4804 years. It is thus that the Chaldean and Egyptian astrologers, according 27 to Macrobius and Nonnus, indicated the position even of the planets at the epoch of the creation of the world, and that of the general deluge. On calculating, according to the system of the periodical series, the signs which presided over the years several ages before the sacrifice of Tlalixco, (the year ome acatl, or 2 canes, corresponding to the year 1091 of the Christian aera, I find, that the dates and the signs do not entirely correspond with the duration of each Mexican age. Neither are they marked in the paintings in the Vatican; but I have taken them from a fragment of Mexican can history preserved by Alva Ixtlilxochitl, who fixes the duration of the four ages not to 18028, but only to 1417 years. We must not be surprised at this in astrological calculations; for the first number includes almost as many indictions as the last contains years. Thus in the mystic chronology of the Hindoos, the substitution of days for divine years * reduces the four ages of 4,320,000 years to 12000. __________ * Bailly, Astr. Ind., p. ci. 28 (table - not copied) On examining, according to the system of the Mexican calendar the numbers which are contained in this table, we see, that two ages, separated by an interval of years, the interval of which is a multiple of 52, cannot have different29 signs. It is impossible, that the fourth destruction should have taken place in the year calli, if the third happened in the year tecpatl. I cannot guess what has caused this error: it may however have been only in appearance, and in the historical monuments, which have been transmitted to us, then may have been no mention of the small number of years employed by nature for each regeneration. The Hindoos distinguish the interval between two cataclysms, and the duration of each; in the same manner, in the fragment of Ixtlilxochitl, we read, that the first catastrophic is seven hundred and seventy-six years distant from the second: but that the famine, which destroyed the giants, lasted thirteen years, or the quarter of a cycle. In the two chronological systems which we have just mentioned, the epocha of the creation of the world, or rather the beginning of the great periods, is the year presided by tochtli; which sign was to the Mexicans, what Aries was to the Persians. In every nation astronomy indicates the position of the Sun, at the moment when the stars begin their course; and we have already shown it to be probable, when speaking * of the relations observed between the notion of the ages and the signification of the hieroglyphic ollin, that tochtli corresponds to one of the solstitial points. __________ * Vol. xiii, 352, p. 402. 30 According to the system of the Mexicans, the four great revolutions of nature are caused by the four elements; the first catastrophe is the annihilation of the productive faculty of the earth: the three others are owing to the action of fire, air, and water. After each destruction mankind was regenerated, and all of the ancient race that did not perish were transformed into birds, into donkeys, or into fish. These transformations remind us also of the traditions of the East: but in the system of the Hindoos, the ages, or yougas, are all terminated by inundations; and in that of the Egyptians * the cataclysms alternate with conflagrations, and men save themselves sometimes on the mountains, and at other times in the valleys. We should wander from our subject, were we here to explain the small local revolutions, which took place at various periods in the mountainous parts of Greece; † and discuss the well-known passage of the second book of Herodotus, which has so much exercised the sagacity of commentators. It appears almost certain, that this passage does not relate to apocatastases, __________ * Timaeus, cap.5, (Platon. Oper., 1578, ed. Serran., t. 3. p. 22): De Legib., lib. iii, (Op. omn., t. ii, p. 676-679): Origines contra Celsum, lib. iv, c. 20 (ed. Delarue, p. 338 & 514). † Arist. Meteor., lib. i, u. 14 (Op. omn. ed. Duval, 1639, p. 770). 31 but to four (seeming) changes in the places of the setting and rising of the Sun, * caused by the precession of the equinoxes. † We may be surprised at finding five ages or suns among the Mexican nations, while the Hindoos and Greeks admit only four; it may not be amiss, therefore, to observe, that the cosmogony of the Mexicans accords with that of the people of Thibet, which considers also the present as the fifth age. If we attentively examine the fine passage of Hesiod ‡ in which he explains the oriental system of the renovation of nature, we see, that this poet counts in reality five generations in four ages. He divides the age of brass into two parts, which comprehend the third and fourth generations; § and we may be astonished, that, so clear a passage should have sometimes been misinterpreted. || We are ignorant of the number of ages recorded in the books of the Sybil; ¶ but we think, that the __________ * Herod. lib. ii, c. 142 (Larcher, 1802, t. 2, p. 482) † Dupuis, Mémoire explicative de Zodiaque, p. 37 et 39. ‡ Hesiod, Opera & Dies, v. 174 (Op. omn., ed. Cleric., 1701, p. 224). § Hesiod, v. 143 & 155. || Fabricii Bibl. Graeca, Hamb., 1790, vol.. 1, p. 246. ¶ Virg. Bucol. IV, v. 4, (ed. Heyne, Lond. 1793, v. 1, p. 74 & 81). 32 analogies we have just indicated are not accidental, and that it is not uninteresting to the philosophy of history, to see the same fictions spread from Etruria and Latium to Thibet, and thence to the ridge of the Cordilleras of Mexico. Beside the tradition of the four suns, and the customs we have already described, * the Cod. Vatican. anon., No. 3738, contains several curious figures. Of these we shall mention, fol. 4, the chichiuhalquehuitl, tree of milk, or celestial tree, that distils milk from the extremity of its branches, and around which are seated infants, who have expired a few days after their birth; fol. 5, a jaw tooth, perhaps of a mastodonte, weighing three pounds, given in 1564, by P. Rios, to the viceroy Don Lewis de Velasco; fol. 8, the volcano Cotcitepetl, speaking mountain, celebrated for the penance Quetzalcohuatl, and designated by a mouth and a tongue, which are the hieroglyphics of speech; fol. 10, the pyramid of Cholula: and fol. 57, the seven chiefs of the seven Mexican tribes, clothed with rabbits skins, and issuing from the seven caverns of Chicomoztoc. From sheet 68 to sheet 93, this manuscript contains copies of hieroglyphical paintings composed after the conquest; we see natives hung upon trees, holding the cross in their hand; soldiers __________ * Plate XIV, vol. xiii, p. 201. 33 of Cortez on horseback setting fire to a village; monks baptizing wretched Indians at the moment they are about to be thrown into the water to be drowned. From these circumstances we recognise the arrival of the Europeans in the new world. |
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34 TAKEN FROM THE BORGIAN MANUSCRIPT OF VELETRI, AND SIGNS OF THE DAYS OF THE MEXICAN ALMANAC. PLATE XXVII. The twenty signs of the days have been selected from the first pages of the manuscript of Veletri, each of which contains five rows of thirteen hieroglyphics, and in all 5x13x4 = 260 days, or a year of twenty half lunations of the ritual almanac. These two hundred and sixty signs are so disposed, that four double pages are filled with the reduction of the periods of thirteen days, or half decades of the civil almanac, of which fifty-two form a ritual year. It is worthy of remark also, that, in order to facilitate the reading of these pictures, the author has repeated, 35 at the beginning of each row, the last sign of the preceding row. Mr. Zoega has observed the same peculiarity in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; and it is front observations of this kind, that he has judged whether hieroglyphics were read from right to left, or from left to right. We find in the Codex Borgianus the sign of motion, the print of a foot, sometimes added to the sign of a day; I am ignorant of the cause of this singular assemblage. Of the four rows of the hieroglyphics of the day (Plate 27, No. 1), the first, which according to the system of the Mexican writing is the lowest row, exhibits, from right to left, cipactli, ehecatl, calli, cuetzpalin, and cohuatl; the second, miquiztli, mazatl, tochtli, atl, and itzcuintli; the third, ozomiatli, malinalli, acatl, ocelotl, quauhtli, and cozcaquauhtli; the fourth, or the uppermost row, ollin, tecpatl, quiahuitl, and xochitl. We have already given * the significations of these hieroglyphics. On comparing the figures of the 27th plate with those published by Valadés, Gemelli, Clavigero, and Cardinal Lorenzana, we see how inaccurate are the notions, which have been hitherto given respecting the signs of the Mexican calendar. The painting, which represents a figure appearing to have four hands (Plate 27, No. 2), is taken __________ * Vol. xiii, p. 296, 313, 337-354. 36 from the Codex Borgianus, fol, 58. I have copied a whole page, in order to give a clear idea of the distribution of this curious manuscript. As we find nothing among the Mexican hieroglyphics that announces the worship of the lingam (______), so we observe none of those figures with several heads and hands, which characterize, as we may say, the mystic paintings of the Hindoos. The man placed on the right in the upper compartment is a priest clothed with the skin of a human victim recently sacrificed. The painter has marked the drops of blood, wish cover tills skin; that of the hands hangs on be arm of the sacrificed, who hence appears to have four hands. This costume, and the horrible and disgusting ceremonies which it recalls to mind, are described by Torquemada. * A chapel, known under the name of Yopico, was built over the cavern that contained the human skins. We have already seen, that the fourth Mexican month tlacaxipehualiztli, which corresponds to our month of March, had received its denomination from these sanguinary festivals. In the Codex Borgianus, which is a ritual calendar, we find in reality the figure of a priest, covered with the skin of a man, under the sign of the day which indicates the vernal equinox. † The head __________ * Mon. Ind. lib. 10, cap. 12 (vol. ii, p. 271). † Cod. Borg. fol. 25 (Fabr. MS n. 105, 275, and 299). See also vol. xiii, p. 290. 37 of the sacrificer is covered with one of those pointed caps, which are worn hi China, and on the north west coast of America. Opposite this figure is seated the god of fire, Xiuhteuctli Tletl, at whose feet is a sacred vase. In the first year of the Mexican cycle, Tletl is the sign night for the day on which the vernal equinox falls. The lower compartment (Plate 27, No. 2) represents the god Tonacateuctli, holding in his right hand a knife, some leaves of agave, and a bag of incense. We are entirely ignorant what is meant by the two children holding each other by the hand, and of whom a comment at or has observed, "they seem to speak the same language." The serpent placed below the temple might lead us to suspect, that they are the twin children of Cihuacohuatl, the celebrated serpent woman, the Eve of the Aztecks. But the smal1 figures of the Codex Borgianus, fol. 61, are females, as is evidently indicated by the disposition of their hair; while those represented in the manuscript of the Vatican * are males. __________ * See Plate 23 of this Atlas. |
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38 PLATE XXVIII. This hatchet, made of a compact feldspar passing into the real jade of M. de Saussure, is loaded with hieroglyphics. I am indebted for it to the kindness of Don Andres Manuel del Rio, professor of mineralogy in the school of mines at Mexico, and author of an excellent treatise on Oryctognosy. I have deposited it in the king of Prussia's cabinet at Berlin. Jade, compact feldspar (dichter feldspath), Lydian stone, and certain varieties of basalt, are all of them mineral substances, which, in both continents, as well as in the South Sea islands, furnished the savage and half civilized nations with the first materials for their hatchets, and various offensive weapons. As the Greeks and Romans employed brass long after the introduction of iron, so the Mexicans and Peruvians made use of stone hatchets, when copper and brass were very common among them. Notwithstanding our long and frequent 39 excursions in the Cordilleras of both Americas we were never able to discover a rock of jade; and this rock being so scarce, the more are we surprised at the immense quantity of jade hatchets, which are found on digging in plains formerly inhabited, from the Ohio to the mountains of Chili. |
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40 OF BASALTIC PORPHYRY, FOUND UNDER THE PAVEMENT OF THE GREAT SQUARE AT MEXICO. PLATE XXIX. The whole of the remains of the Mexican sculpture and painting, which we have hitherto examined, prove, excepting a sing a single group of figures represented on the eleventh plate, a total ignorance of the proportions of the human body, a great rudeness and incorrectness in the drawing, but a very minute research into the truth of the detail. We may be surprised at finding the imitative art in this state of barbarism among a people, whose political existence had displayed for ages a certain degree of civilization; and among whom idolatry, astrological superstitious, and the desire of keeping up the remembrance 41 of events, multiplied the number of idols, as well as that of sculptured stones and historical paintings. We must not however forget, that several nations, which have acted a part on the stage of the world, particularly the people of central and eastern Asia, with whom the inhabitants of Mexico appear to be connected by very near ties, exhibit this same contrast of social perfection and of infancy in the arts. We might be tempted to apply to the inhabitants of Tartary, and those of the mountains of Mexico, what a great historian of antiquity * said of the Arcadians: "The cold and gloomy climate of Arcadia gives the inhabitants a harsh and austere aspect; for it is natural that men, in their manners, figure, complexion, and institutions, should resemble their climate." But in proportion as we examine the state of our species in different regions, and accustom ourselves to compare the physiognomy of countries with that of the nations inhabiting them, We mistrust that specious theory, which refers to the climate alone what is owing to the concurrence of a great number of moral and physical circumstances. Among the Mexicans, the ferocity of manners sanctioned by a sanguinary worship, the tyranny exercised by the princes and the priests, the chimerical __________ * Polyb., Hist. lib. IV, § 80 (ed. Casaub. 1609, p. 290, D). 42 dreams of astrology, and the frequent use of symbolic writing, appear to have singularly contributed to perpetuate the barbarism of the arts, and the taste for incorrect and hideous forms. Those idols, before which the blood of human victims daily flowed; those first divinities, the offspring of fear; united in their attributes all that is strange in nature. The lineaments of the human fig-lire disappeared under the load of their garments, helmets with heads of carnivorous animals, and serpents twisted round the body. A religious respect for the signs conferred on every idol its individual figure, from which it was not allowable to deviate; and it was in these means, that the incorrectness of the figures was perpetuated, and the people accustomed themselves to the assemblage of those monstrous resemblances, which were however disposed according to systematic ideas. Astrology, and the complicated manner of graphically marking the divisions of time, were the principal causes of these aberrations of the imagination. Each event seemed to be at the same time under the influence of the hieroglyphics which presided over the day, the half-decade or the year; and hence arose the idea of coupling signs, and creating those merely fantastic beings, which we fills so often repeated in the astrological paintings that have reached us. The genius of the American languages, which, like the Sanscrit, the Greek, 43 and tongues of Germanic origin, leads us to recall to mind a great number of ideas in a single word, has no doubt facilitated those uncouth creations of mythology and the imitative arts. The people, faithful to their primitive habits, whatever be the degree of their intellectual culture, pursue, for ages, the path they have once traced. An intelligent writer * has remarked, speaking of the solemn simplicity of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, "that these hieroglyphics offered rather an absence, than a viciousness of imitation." It is on the contrary this viciousness of imitation, this taste for the minutest details, this repetition of the most ordinary forms, that characterize the historical paintings of the Mexicans. We have already observed, † that we ought not to confound representations, in which almost every thing is individualized, with mere hieroglyphics, adapted to represent abstract ideas. If from these the Greeks borrowed the ideal style, ‡ the Mexican people found, in the frequent employment of historical and astrological paintings, and in their respect for forms generally uncouth, and always incorrect, insuperable obstacles to the progress of the imitative arts. In __________ * Quatremére de Quincy, sur l'Idéal dans l'Art du Dessin, Archives littéraries, 1805, No. 21, p. 300 and 310. † See vol. xiii, vol. 349. ‡ Quartremére de Quincy p. 303-307. 44 Greece religion became the chief support of the fine arts, to winch it gave existence; and the imagination of the Greeks spread a soothing charm over the most gloomy objects. Among a people groaning beneath the yoke of a sanguinary worship, death every where obtrudes itself under the most hideous emblems; it is engrave on every stone, inscribed on every page of their books, and their religious monuments seem to be reared with no other view, than to produce terror and dismay. I have thought proper to make these observations, before I fix the attention of the reader on the monstrous idol represented in the 29th plate. This rock, sculptured on every side, is more than three metres high, and two broad. It was discovered under the pavement of the Plaza Mayor at Mexico, within the enclosure of the great temple, in the month of August, 1790; consequently a few months before * the discovery of the enormous stone, which displays the holidays and the hieroglyphics of the days of the Azteck calendar. the workmen, who were employed in making excavations in order to build a subterraneous aqueduct, found it in a horizontal position, thirty seven metres to the west of the Viceroy's palace, and five metres north of the Azequia of St. Joseph. As it is scarcely probable, __________ * See vol. xiii, 397. 45 that the soldiers of Cortez, when they buried the idols to conceal them from the view of the natives, transported masses of considerable weight very far from the sacellum where they were originally placed, it is important to mark with precision the spots, in which all the remains of Mexican sculpture were found. These nations will become particularly interesting, if a government, anxious to throw light on the remote civilization of the Americans, should make researches by digging round the cathedral in the chief square of the ancient Tenochtitlan, and the market-place Tlatelalco, * to which, in the last days of the siege, the Mexicans withdrew with their household gods (Tepitotan), their sacred books (Teoamoxtli,) and whatever they had of most value. When we cast our eyes on the idol represented in the 29th plate, as it is seen in front (Fig. 1), behind (Fig. 3), on one side (Fig. 2), from above (Fig. 4), and from beneath (Fig. 5), we might be tempted at first to think, that this monument is a teotetl (divine stone), a kind of bety-lum, † ornamented with sculpture, a rock on which hieroglyphic signs are engraved. But when we examine more closely this shapeless mass, we distinguish on the upper part the united __________ * Gama, Descripcion de las Piedras, etc. p. 2. † Zoega, de Obel. de Obel. p. 208. 46 head of two monsters; and we find in each face (Fig. 1 and 3) two eyes, and a large mouth with four teeth. These hideous figures are perhaps only masks; for among the Mexicans they were accustomed to mask their idols on the indisposition of a king, or any other public calamity. The arms and feet are hidden under a drapery surrounded by enormous serpents, which the Mexicans denoted by the name of cohuatli-cuye, garment of serpents. The whole of these accessories, especially the fringes in form of feathers, are sculptured with the greatest care. Mr. Gama, in a separate treatise, has rendered it very probable, that this idol represents (Fig. 3) the god of war, Huitzilopochtli or Tlacahuepancuexcotzin; and (Fig. 1) his wife, called Teoyamiqui * (from miqui to die, and teoyao, divine war), because she conducted the souls of warriors, who died in the defence of the gods, to the house of the Sun, the Elysium of the Mexicans, † where she transformed them into humming-birds. The death's heads and mutilated hands, four of which surround the bosom of the goddess, recall to mind the horrible sacrifices (teoquauhquetzoliztli) celebrated in the fifteenth period of thirteen days after the summer solstice, in honor of the god of war, and his female companion, Teoyamiqui. __________ * Boturini, Idea de una nueva Historia general, p. 27 and 66. † Torquememada, lib. xiii, c. 48 (tom. 2, p. 569). 47 The mutilated hands alternate with the figure of certain vases, in which incense was burnt. These vases were called top-xicalli, bags in the form of calebashes, (from toptli, a purse woven with the thread of the pita, and xicalli, a calebash). This idol being sculptured on every side, even beneath (Fig. 5), where we see represented Mitlanteulitli, the lord of the place, of the dead, we cannot doubt, but that it was supported in the air by means of two columns, on which rested the parts A and B in figures 1 and 3. According to this uncouth arrangement, the head of the idol was probably created five or six metres above the pavement of the temple, so that the priests (teopixqui) dragged the unhappy victims to the altar, making them pass beneath the figure Mictlanteuchtli. The Viceroy, count Revillagigedo, transported this monument to the university of Mexico, which he considered as the most proper place for the preservation of the curious remains of American antiquity. * The professors of this University, of the order of St. Dominic, were unwilling to expose this idol to the sight of the Mexican youth; and buried it anew in one of the passages of the college two feet deep. I should not have had the means of examining this __________ * Officio del 5 Sept. 1790. 48 idol, had not the bishop of Monterey, Don Feliciano Marin, who passed through Mexico in his way to his diocese, prevailed on the rector of the university, at my solicitation, to unbury it. I found Mr. Gama's drawing, which I have copied in the 29th plate, very exact. The stone, of which this monument is formed, is a bluish gray basaltic wakke, cleft, and filled with vitreous feldspar. The same researches in digging to which we are indebted for the sculptures represented in plates 21, 23, and 29, led to the discovery, in the month of January, 1791, of a tomb two metres long, and one broad, filled with very fine sand, and containing a well preserved skeleton of a carnivorous quadruped. The tomb was square, and formed of slabs of porous amygdaloid, called tezontle. The animal appeared to be a coyote, or Mexican wolf. Clay vases and small well cast brass bells were placed near the bones. This tomb was no doubt that of some sacred animal; for the writers of the sixteenth century inform us, that the Mexicans erected small chapels to the wolf, chantico; to the tiger, clatocaocelotl; to the eagle, quetzalhuexoloquauhtli; and to the snake. The cou, or sacellum of the chantico, was called tetlanman; and what is more, the priests of the sacred wolf formed a particular congregation, the convent 49 of which bore the name of Tetlacmancalmecac. * It is easy to conceive how the divisions of the zodiac, and the names of the signs that presided over the days, the half-lunations, and the years, may have led men to the worship of animals. The nomade tribes reckon by lunations; they distinguish the moon of the rabbits, that of the tigers, that of the goats, &c., according to the different periods of the year in which the wild or tame animals afford them enjoyments, or inspire them with terror. When by degrees the measures of time become measures of space, † and nations form the dodecatemorion of the zodiac of the full moons, the names of the wild and tame animals are transferred to the constellations themselves. It is thus that the Tartar zodiac, which contains only real ______, may be considered as the zodiac of the hunting and shepherd tribes. The tiger, unknown in Africa, gives it a character exclusively Asiatic. This animal is no longer found in the Chaldean, Egyptian, or Greek zodiac, in which the tiger, the hare, the horse, and the dog, are replaced by the lion of Africa, Thrace, and western Asia, __________ * Nieremberg, Hist. Nat. Lib, viii, c. 22, p. 144. Torquemada, lib. II, c. 58; lib.VIII, c. 13 (tom. 1. p. 194, tom. 2, p. 291). † See vol. xiii, p. 370. 50 the balance, the twins, and, what is very remarkable, by the symbols of agriculture. The Egyptian zodiac is the zodiac of an agricultural nation. In proportion as nations are civilized, and the mass of their ideas enlarged, the denominations of the zodiacal constellations have lost their primitive uniformity, and the number of celestial animals has diminished. This number, however, has remained considerable enough, to exercise an evident influence on religious systems. Astrological reveries have led men to attach a great importance to the signs, which preside over the different divisions of time. At Mexico, each sign of the days had its altar. In the great teocalli, (_______), near the column which supported the image of the planet Venus (Ilhuicatitlan), were small chapels for the asterisms macuilcalli (5 house), ome tochtli (2 rabbit), chicome atl (7 water), and nahui ocelotl (4 tiger); as the greater part of the hieroglyphics of the days was composed of animals, the worship these was intimately connected with the system of the Calendar. |
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51 OF THE RIO VINAGRE, NEAR THE VOLCANO OF PURACE. PLATE XXX. The city of Popayan, capital of a province of New Grenada, is situate in the beautiful valley of Rio Cauca, at the foot of the great volcanoes of Puracé and Sotara. Its height above the level of the South Sea being only eighteen hundred metres, it enjoys, under a latitude of 2 degrees 26 minutes 17 seconds, a delicious climate, much less sultry than that of Carthago and Ibagué, and infinitely more temperate than that of Quito and Santa-Fé de Bogota. On ascending from Popayan toward the top of the volcano of Puracé, one of the great elevations of the Andes, we find, at two thousand six hundred and fifty metres height a small plain (Llano del Corazon), inhabited by 52 Indians, and cultivated with the greatest care. This delightful plain is hounded by two ravines extremely deep, on the brink of which precipices the houses of the village of Puracé are built. Waters spring out profusely from the porphyritic rock; every garden is enclosed by a hedge of euphorbiums (lechero) with slender leaves, and of the most delicate green. Nothing is more agreeable than the contrast of this beautiful verdure with the chain of black and arid mountains, which surround the volcano, and which are cleft and torn asunder by earthquakes. The small village of Puracé, which we visited in the month of November, 1801, is celebrated in the country for the beautiful cataracts of the river Pusambio, the waters of which are acid, and called by the Spaniards Rio Vinagre. This small river is warm toward its source, and probably owes its origin to the daily melting of the snows, and the sulphur that, burns in the interior of the volcano. It forms, near the plain of Corazan, three cataracts, the two uppermost of which are very considerable. The second of these falls (chorreras), I have sketched in the 30th plate, as it is seen from the garden of an Indian, near the house of the missionary of Puracé, who is a franciscan monk. The water, which makes its way through a cavern, precipitates itself down more than a hundred and 53 twenty metres. The cascade is extremely picturesque, and attracts the addition of travellers; but, the inhabitants of Popayan regret, that the river, instead of mingling itself with the Rio Cauca, is not in gulfed in some abyss: for the latter river is destitute of fish for four leagues, on account of the mixture of its waters with those of the Rio Vinagre, which are loaded both with oxid of iron, and sulphuric and muriatic acids. On the foreground of the sketch is a group of pourretia pyramidata, a plant resembling the pitcairnia, known on the Cordilleras by the name of achupallas. The stem of this plant is filled with a farinaceous pith, which serves as food to the great black bear of the Andes, and in times of scarcity even to men. |
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54 OF THE PROVINCE OF JEAN DE BRACAMOROS. PLATE XXXI. In order to render the communication between the coasts of the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, and the province of Jean de Bracamoros, situate on the east of the Andes, more easy, the postman of Peru descends swimming, for two days, first the river of Guancabamba, or Chamaya, and afterward that of Amazons, from Pomahuaca and Ingatambo to Tomependa. He wraps the few letters, of which He is the bearer every month, sometimes in a handkerchief, sometimes in a kind of drawers called guayuco, which He winds as a turban around his head. This turban contains also the great knife (machette), with which every Indian is armed, rather to cut his way through the forests, than as a weapon of defence, 55 The Chamaya river is not navigable, on account of a great number of small cascades; I found * its fall five hundred and forty-two metres from the ford of Pucara to its mouth, in the river of Amazons, below the village of Choras, in the small distance of eighteen leagues. The postman is called in the country the swimming postman (el cureo que nada). The 31st plate represents him as we saw him in the village of Chamaya, at the moment he entered the water. In order to fatigue himself less in descending the river, he supports himself on a log of bombax or ochroma (palo de valza), trees of very light wood. When a ledge of rocks intersects the bed of the river, he lands above the cascade, crosses the forest, and reenters the water when he sees no farther danger. He has no need of taking provision with him, for he rinds a welcome in a great number of huts, surrounded with plaintain trees, and situate along the banks of the river between las Huertas de Pucara, Cavico, Sonanga, and Tomependa. Sometimes, to render the journey more agreeable, he is accompanied by another Indian. The rivers, which mingle their waiters with those of the Marannon above Pongo de Mayasi, are happily not infested with crocodiles; the savage hordes, therefore, almost all travel like the Peruvian __________ * See my Recueil d'Observ. Astron. vol. 1. p. 314. 56 postman. It is very seldom, that letters are either lost, or wetted during the passage from Ingatambo to the residence of the governor of Jaen. After the postman has rested a few days at Tomependa, he returns either by the Paramo de Pareton, or by the dangerous road which leads to the villages of San Felipe and Sagiqué, the crests of which abound in bark of the finest quality |
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57 OF THE A Z T E C K S FROM THE THE DELUGE TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY OF MEXICO. PLATE XXXII. This historic painting has already been published, at the end of the seventeenth century, in the narrative of the voyage of Gemelli Carreri. Although the Giro del Mondo of this author is a work well known, we have thought it proper to republish this piece, on the authenticity of which some ill-founded doubts have been raised, that deserve to be examined with the most scrupulous attention, It is only by the reunion of a great number of documents, that we can hope 58 to throw some light on the history, the manners, and the civilization of those nations of America, that were ignorant of the admirable art of analyzing sounds, and painting them by separate or combined characters. A comparison of the documents which each other not only renders their explanation easy, but affords also certain data respecting the confidence, which the Azteck traditions recorded in the writings of the first Spanish missionaries deserve. I think, that such powerful motives will be a sufficient justification of the choice we have made of a few articles collected from works already printed, and adding them to the many inedited documents published in this collection. The hieroglyphic sketch given in the 32d plate has been hitherto so much the more neglected, as it is found in a book, which, in consequence of the most extraordinary scepticism, has been considered as a mass of falsehood and imposture. I durst not speak of Gemelli Carreri, says the illustrious author of the History of America, "because it seems to be now a received opinion, that this traveller was never out of Italy; and that his famous Giro del Mondo is an account of a fictitious voyage." It is true, that Robertson does not seem to adopt the opinion he advances: for he judiciously adds, that this imputation of fraud does not appear to him founded 59 on any good evidence. * I shall not decide the question, whether Gemelli visited China or Persia; but, having travelled in the interior of Mexico a great part of the road, which the Italian traveller so minutely describes, I can affirm it to be no less certain, that Gemelli was in Mexico, at Acapulco, and the small villages of Mazatlan and of San Augustin de las Cuevas, than that Pallas has been in the Crimea, and Mr. Salt in Abyssinia. Gemelli's descriptions have that local tint, which is the principal charm of the narratives of travels, written by the most unlettered men; and which can be given only by those who have been ocular witnesses of what they describe. A respectable ecclesiastic, Abbé Clavigero, † who traversed Mexico almost half a century before me, had already undertaken the defence of the author del Giro del Mondo; and has very justly observed, that, had Gemelli never left Italy, it was impossible that he could have spoken with so much accuracy of persons, who lived in his time, of the convents of the city of Mexico, and of the churches of several villages, the names of which were unknown in Europe. The same tone of veracity, and we must insist on this point, does not appear in the notions, which the author professes to have borrowed __________ * Robertson's History of America, 1803, vol. iii, p. 418. † Storia Antica di Messico, vol. i, p. 24. 60 from the recitals of his friends. The work of Gemelli Carreri, like that of a celebrated traveller, who, in our own times, has been treated with so much severity, seems to contain an inextricable mixture errors and well observed facts. The sketch of the migration of the Aztecks formerly made part of the distinguished collection of Dr. Siguenza, who inherited the hieroglyphic paintings of a noble Indian, Juan de Alba Ixtlilxochitl. This collection, as Abbé Clavigero affirms, was preserved, till 1759, in the college of the Jesuits at Mexico. We are ignorant of its fate after the destruction of the order. I turned over the leaves of the Azteck paintings preserved in the library of the university, without being able to find the original of the drawing represented in the 32d plate; but several old copies exist at Mexico, which certainly were not made from the engraving of Gemelli Carreri. If we compare all that is symbolical and chronological in the painting of the migrations with the hieroglyphics contained in the manuscripts of Rome and Veletri, and in the collections of Mendoza and Gama, no one certainly would give credit to the hypothesis, that the drawing of Gemelli is the fiction of sonic Spanish monk, who has attempted to prove, by apocryphal documents, that the traditions of the Hebrews are found among the indigenous nations of America. All that we know of the 61 history, the worship, the astrology, and the cosmogonical fables of the Mexicans, forms a system, the parts of which are closely connected with each other. The paintings, the bas-reliefs, the ornaments of the idols and of the divine stones (teotetl of the Aztecks, ___ _____ of the Greeks), all bear the same character, and the same physiognomy. The deluge that begins the history of the Aztecks, and from which Coxcox saved himself in a bark, is indicated with the same circumstances in the drawing, which represents the destructions and regenerations of the world. * The four indictions (tlalpilli), which relate † to these catastrophes, or to the subdivisions of the great year, are sculptured on a stone, discovered in 1790 in the foundations of the teocalli of Mexico. Robertson, who is always severe in the examination of facts, has admitted, in the last edition of his work, the authenticity of the paintings of the museum of Siguenza. "We cannot doubt," says this great, historian, "that we are indebted for these paintings to the natives of Mexico, and the correctness of the drawing seems to prove only, that the copy has been made or retouched by an European artist." This last observation does not appear to be entirely confirmed by the great number of hieroglyphic __________ * Plate 26. † See page 25; and vol. xiii, p. 372. 62 paintings preserved in the archives of the viceroyalty at Mexico, where, since the conquest, and especially since the year 1540, an evident improvement in the art of drawing is perceived. I saw, in the Boturini collection, clothes of cotton, and rolls of agave paper, on which were represented, by very correct outlines, bishops on the backs of mules, Spanish lancemen on horseback, oxen yoked to a plough, vessels arriving at Vera Crux, and a number of other objects unknown to the Mexicans before the arrival of Cortez. These paintings were made not by Europeans, but by Indians and Mestizoes. On looking over the hieroglyphic manuscripts of different periods, we observe the progress of the arts toward perfection. The stunted figures become more proportionate. The limbs separate themselves from the trunk; the eye in profile is no longer seen as if it were in the front; horses, which in the Azteck paintings resembled Mexican stags, assume gradually their real form. The figures are no longer grouped as if in procession; their relations to each other are multiplied; we see them in action; and the symbolic painting, which sketches or recalls events, rather than expresses them, is insensibly transformed into an animated painting, which employs only a few phonetic hieroglyphics, * to indicate the names of __________ * See vol. xiii, page 159. 63 persons and sites. I am inclined to think, that, the picture, which Siguenza communicated to Gemelli, is a copy made after the conquest, either by a native, or the descendant of a Spaniard and a Mexican. The painter has no doubt avoided following the incorrect forms of the original; he has imitated with scrupulous exactness the hieroglyphics of the names, and the cycles; but he has altered the proportions of the human figures, the drapery of which he has formed in a manner analogous to that we have found in other Mexican paintings. * The following are the principal events indicated in the 32d plate, according to Siguenza's explanation, to which we shall add a few incidents taken from the historical annals of the Mexicans. The history begins by the Deluge of Coxcox, or the fourth destruction of the world, which, according to the Azteck cosmogony, terminates the fourth of the great cycles, atonatiuh, the age water. † This cataclysm took place, according to the two received chronological systems, one thousand four hundred and seventeen, or eighteen thousand and twenty-eight years after the beginning of the age of earth, tlaltonatiuh. The enormous difference of these numbers ought __________ * Plate 14, No. 5 and 7. † See above, page 23. 64 less to astonish us, when we recollect the hypotheses, which in our days have been advanced by Bailly, Sir William Jones, and Bentley, * on the duration of the five Yougas of the Hindoos. Of the different nations that inhabit Mexico, paintings representing the deluge of Coxcox are found among the Aztecks, the Miztecks, the Zapotecks, the Tlascaltecks, and the Mechoacanese. The Noah, Xisuthrus, or Menou of these nations, is called Coxcox, Teo-Cipactli, or Tezpi. He saved himself conjointly with his wife, Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft of ahuahuete (cupressus disticha). Painting represents Coxcox in the midst of the Theater, lying in a bark. The mountain, the summit of which, crowned by a tree, rises above the waters, is the Peak of Colhuacan, the Ararat, of the Mexicans. The horn, which is represented on the left, is the phonetic hieroglyphic of Colhuacan. At the foot of the mountain appear the heads of Coxcox and his wife. The latter of these is known by the two tresses in the form of horns, which, as we have often observed, denote the female sex. The men born after the deluge were dumb: a dove, from the top of a tree, distributes among them tongues, represented under the form of small commas. † __________ * Asiat. Researches, Vol. 8, page 195. † See the lawsuit in Plate 12. 65 We must not confound this dove with the bird which brings Coxcox tidings, that the waters were dried up. The people of Mechoacan preserved a tradition, according to which Coxcox, whom they called Tezpi, embarked in a spacious acalli with his children, several animals, and grain, the preservation of which was of importance to mankind. When the great spirit, Tezcatlipoca, ordered the waters to with draw, Tezpi sent out from his bark a vulture, the zopilote (vultur aura). This bird, which feeds on dead flesh, did not return on account of the great number of carcases, with which the earth, recently dried up, was strewed. Tezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the humming bird alone, returned, the humming bird alone, returned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves: Tezpi, seeing that fresh verdure began to clothe the soil, quitted his bark near the mountain of Colhuacan. These traditions, where repeat, remind us of others of high and venerable antiquity. The sight of marine substances, found even on the loftiest summits, might give men, who have had no communication, the of great inundations, which for a certain time extinguished organic life on the earth: but we not to acknowledge the traces of a common origin, wherever cosmogonical ideas, and the first traditions of nations, offer striking analogies even in the minutest circumstances? does not the hummingbird 66 bird of Tezpi remind us of Noah’s dove, that of Deucalion, and the birds. which, according to Berosus, Xisuthrus sent out from his ark, to see whether the waters had run off, and whether he might erect altars to the protecting divinities of Chaldea? The tongues, which the dove distributed to the nations of America (No. 1), being infinitely varied, these nations disperse, and fifteen heads of families only, who spoke the same tongue, and from whom the Toltecks, the Aztecks, and the Acolhuans descended, unite, and arrive at Aztlan, (the country of the garces or flamingoes). The bird placed on the hieroglyphic of water, atl, denotes Aztlan. The pyramidical monument with steps is a teocalli. I am astonished at finding a palm tree near this teocalli: this plant certainly does not indicate a northern region; nevertheless it is almost certain, that we must look for the first country of the Mexican nations, Aztlan, Huehuetlapallan, and Amaquemecan, at least North of the 42d degree of latitude. Perhaps the Mexican painter, inhabiting the torrid zone, placed a palm-tree near the temple of Aztlan only because he was ignorant, that this tree was a stranger to the northern countries. The fifteen chiefs have the simple hieroglyphics of their names above their heads. From the teocalli erected in Aztlan to Chapoltepec the figures placed along the road indicate 67 the places where the Aztecks made some abode, and the towns they built. Tocolco and Oztotlan (No. 3 and 4), humiliation and the place of grottoes Mizquiahuala (No. 5), denoted by a mimosa bearing fruit placed near a teocalli; Teotzapotlan (No. 11), place of divine fruits; Ilhuicatepec (No. 12); Papantla (No. 13), herb with broad leaves; Tzompango (No. 14), place of human bones; Apazco (No. 15), vessel of clay; Atlicalaguian (a little above the preceding hieroglyphic), a crevice in which a rivulet disappears; Quauhtitlan (No. 16), a thicket inhabited by an eagle; Atzcapozalco (No. 17), an ant's nest; Chalco (No. 19), place of spinning; Tolpetlac (No. 20), mats of rushes; Quauhtepec (No. 9), the eagle's mountain, from quahtli, an eagle, and tepec (in Turkish tepe) a mountain; Tetepaneo (No. 8), a wall composed of several small stones; Chicomoztoe (No 7), the seven grottoes; Huitzquilocan (No. 6), place of thistles; Xaltepozauhcan (No. 22), place from which sand is extracted; Cozeaquauhco (No. 33), name of a vulture; Techcatitlan (No. 31), place of obsidian mirrors; Azcaxochitl (No. 21), flower of the ant; Tepetlapan (No. 23), place where is found the tepelate, a clayey breccia, which contains amphibole, vitreous feldspar, and pumice stone; Apan (No. 32), place of water; Teozomaco (No. 24), place of the divine monkey; Chopoltepec (No. 25), 68 mountain of the locusts, a place shadowed by ancient cypresses, and celebrated for the magnificent view from the top of the hill; * Coxcox, king of Colhuacan (No. 30), denoted by the same phonetic hieroglyphics as are found in the square, which represents the deluge of Coxcox, and the mountain of Colhuacan; Mixiuhcan (No. 29), place of the childbirth; the city of Temazcatitlan (No. 26); the city of Tenochtitlan (No. 34), designated by dykes traversing a marshy soil, and by the nopal (cactus) on which reposed the eagle, which had been pointed out by the oracle, to mark the place where the Aztecks were to build a city, and finish their migrations; the founders of Tenochtitlan (No. 35); those of Tlatelalco (No. 27); the city of Tlatelalco (No. 28), which is at present only a suburb of Mexico. We shall not enter into an historical detail of the events to which the simple and compound hieroglyphics of the painting of Siguenza relate. These events are recorded in Torquemada, and in the ancient history of Mexico published by the Abbé Clavigero. Besides, this picture is less curious as a monument of history, than interesting, from the method which the artist has followed for the connexion of facts. We shall content ourselves with noticing here, that the bundles of __________ * See my Essay on New Spain, vol. i, page 179, 2. 69 rushes tied with ribands (No. 2), do not represent, as Gemelli asserts, periods of a hundred and four years, or Huehuetiliztli, but cycles, or ligatures, Xiuhmolpilli, of fifty-two years. * The whole picture exhibits only eight of these ligatures, or four hundred and sixteen years. Remembering, that the city of Tenochtitlan was founded in the 27th year of a Xiuhmolpilli, we find, that, according to the chronology of the picture (Plate 32), the emigration of the Mexican nations from Aztlan took place five cycles before the year 1298, or in the year 1038 of the Christian era. Gama places this emigration, from other indications, in 1064. The circles accompanying the hieroglyphic of a ligature denote the number of times, that the years have been connected since the famous sacrifice of Tlalixco Now, in the painting under our examination, we find the hieroglyphic of the cycle followed by four nails, or units, near the hieroglyphic of the city of Colhuacan (No. 30). It was then in the year 208 of their era, that the Aztecks were relieved from the yoke of the kings of Colhuacan; and this date is conformable to the annals of Chimalpain. The circles placed on the side of the hieroglyphics of the cities (Nos. 14 and 17), denote the number of the years, that the Azteck nation dwelt in each place, before it continued __________ * See vol. xiii, p. 286. 70 its migrations. I think the ligature (No. 2) indicates the cycle that terminated at Tlalixco: for, according to Chimalpain, the festival of the second cycle was celebrated at Cohuatepetl; and that of the third cycle, at Apuzco; while the Festivals of the fourth and filth cycles took place at Colhuacan, and at Tenochtitlan. The singular idea of recording on a single sheet of small size what, in other Mexican paintings often fills pieces of cloth, or skins, ten or twelve metres in length, has rendered this historical abridgment extremely incomplete. It treats of the migration of the Aztecks only, and not of that of the Toltecks, who preceded the Aztecks more than five centuries in the country of Anahuac: and who differed from them by that love of the arts and that religious and pacific character, which distinguished the Etruscans from the first inhabitants of Rome. The heroic times of the Azteck history extend to the eleventh century of the Christian era. Till then, the divinities mingled in the action of men; and it was at this epocha that Quetzalcohuatl, the Bouddha of the Mexicans, a white and bearded man, priest and legislator, devoted to the most rigorous penances, founder of monasteries and congregations like those of Thibet and western Asia, appeared on the coasts of Panuco. Everything anterior to the emigration from Aztlan is mixed with childish fables. Among barbarous nations, without 71 means of preserving the remembrance of facts, the knowledge of their history is confined to a very short period. There is a point of their existence, beyond which they no longer measure the interval of events. In time, as well as space, distant objects approach each other, and are confounded together; and the same cataclysm, which the Hindoos, the Chinese, and all the nations of the Semitic race place thousands of years before the improvement of their social state, the Americans, a people perhaps not less ancient, but whose awakening has been of a laser date, supposed to be only two cycles before their emigration from Aztlan. |
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72 NEAR P E N I P É. PLATE XXXIII. The small river of Chambo, which flows front the lake of Coley, separates the pleasing village of Guanando from that of Penipé. It waters a ravine, the bottom of which is two thousand four hundred metres above the level of the ocean; and which is celebrated for the cultivation of cochineal, * which the natives have followed from time immemorial. In crossing this country to reach Riobamba, on the western declivity of the volcano of Tunguragua, we stopped to examine the country disrupted by the memorable earthquake of the 7th of February, 1797; which, in the space of a few minutes, destroyed thirty or __________ * See my Political Essay on New Spain, vol. ii, p. 465. 73 forty thousand Indians. We passed the river of Chambo by the bridge of Penipé, in the month of June, 1802. This is one of those bridges of ropes, which the Spaniards call puente de maroma, or de hamaca; and the Peruvian Indians, in the qquichua language, or that of the Incas, cimppachaca, from cimppa, or cimpasca, ropes, tresses, and chaca, a bridge. The ropes, three or four inches in diameter, are made of the fibrous part of the roots of the agave Americana. On each bank they are fastened to a clumsy framework, composed of several trunks of the schinus molle. As their weight makes them bend toward the middle of the river, and as it would be imprudent to stretch them with too much force, they are obliged, when the banks are low, to form steps or ladder; at both extremities of the bridge of hamac. That of Penipé is a hundred and twenty feet long, and seven or eight broad; but there are bridges, which have more considerable dimensions. The great ropes of pitte are covered transversely with small cylindrical pieces of bamboo. These structures, of which the people of South America made use long before the arrival of the Europeans, remind us of the chain bridges at Boutan, and in the interior of Africa. Mr. Turner, * in his interesting account __________ * Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Thibet, 1800, page 55. 74 of his journey to Thibet, has given us the plan of the bridge of Tchintchieu, near the fortress of Chuka, lat. 27 degrees 14 minutes, which is one hundred and forty fed in length, and which may be passed on horseback. This chain bridge in Boutan is composed of five chains covered with pieces of bamboo. All travellers have spoken of the extreme danger of passing over these rope bridges, which look like ribands suspended above a crevice or an impetuous torrent. This danger is not very great, when a single person passes over the bridge as quickly as possible, with his body leaning forward; but the oscillations of the ropes become very strong, when the traveller is conducted by an Indian who walks quicker than himself; or when, frightened by the view of the water which he sees through the interstices of the bamboos, he has the imprudence to stop in the midst of the bridge, and lay hold of the ropes that serve as a rail. A bridge of hamac lasts generally in good condition only twenty or five and twenty years. It is necessary, however, to renew some of the ropes every eight or ten years. But in these countries the police is so negligent, that we often see bridges in which most of the pieces of bamboo are broken. On these old bridges travellers must proceed with great circumspection, to avoid holes, through which the whole body might slip. A few years before my abode at Penipé, the hamac 75 bridge of the Rio Chambo broke down all at once. This was owing to a very dry wind having succeeded long rains, in consequence of which all the ropes gave way at the same time. By this accident four Indians were drowned in the river, which is very deep and extremely rapid. The ancient Peruvians constructed also bridges of wood, supported by piers of stone; though they most commonly satisfied themselves with bridges of ropes. These are extremely useful in a mountainous country, where the depth of the crevices, and the impetuosity of the torrents, prevent the construction of piers. The oscillatory motion might be diminished by lateral ropes fastened to the middle of the bridge, and stretched diagonally toward the bank. It is by a bridge of ropes, of extraordinary length, and on which travellers may pass with loaded mules, that a permanent communication has been established between Quito and Lima, after uselessly expending upwards of forty thousand pounds sterling, to build a stone bridge, near Santa, over a torrent, which rushes from the Cordillera of the Andes. |
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76 OF P E R O T E. PLATE XXXIV. This mountain of basaltic porphyry is less remarkable for its height, than the singular form of a small rock placed on the summit of the eastern side. This rock, resembling a square tower, bears, among the natives of the Azteck race, the name of Nauhcampatepetl, from nauhcampa, four parts, and tepetl, a mountain; and among the Spaniards that of Coffer of Perote. The summit of this mountain commands a very extensive and varied prospect over the plain of Puebla, and the eastern slope of the Cordilleras of Mexico covered with thick forests of liquidambar, arborescent ferns, and sensitive plants. From it we discern the harbour of Vera Cruz castle of St. John of Ulua, and the seacoast. The Coffer does not enter into the limit of the perpetual snows. I found by a 77 barometrical measurement the highest of its summits to be 4088m. (2097 toises) above the level of the sea, which exceeds by 400 metres that of the peak of Teneriffe. I sketched the mountain from the vicinity of the great town of Perote, in the arid plain covered with pumice stone, which we crossed in ascending from Vera Cruz to Mexico. The summit of the Coffer is a naked rock, surrounded by a forest of pines. On climbing this summit, I remarked, that the oaks disappeared at the height of 3165 metres (1619 toises); but the pines, which in then leaves resemble the pinus strobus, are seen at the height of 3942 metres (2202 toises). Under each zone, the temperature and barometric pressure prescribe to the vegetable world the limits, which it cannot pass. |
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78 OF I L I N I S S A. PLATE XXXV. Among the colossal heights, which are seen from around the city of Quito, that of Ilinissa is one of the most majestic and picturesque. The summit of this mountain is divided into two pyramidal points, winch, it, is probable, were the wrecks of a volcano, that has fallen in. Their absolute elevation is 2717 toises. The mountain of Ilinissa is in the western chain of the Andes, in the parallel of the volcano of Cotopaxi; and joins the summit of Ruminnahui by the Alto de Tiopullo, which forms a transverse link, whence the waters run off toward both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. * The pyramids of Ilinissa are visible at an enormous distance in the plains, which form a part of the province of las Esmeraldas. __________ * See above, page 3. 79 Their height, both above the plain of Quito and the seacoast, was trigonometrically measured by Bouguer; and the French academicians determined, by the difference of height obtained in these two measurements, the absolute height of the city of Quito, and the approximative value of the barometric coefficient. Those natural philosophers, who interest themselves in the history of the progress of the sciences, will rank the name of Ilinissa with that, of the Puy-de-dome, where Perrier, following the advice of Pascal, attempted first to measure the height of mountains by the aid of a barometer. |
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80 OF AZTECK HIEROGLYPHICKS, DEPOSITED IN THE ROYAL LIBRARY OF BERLIN. PLATE XXXVI. These fragments are taken from some ancient manuscripts, that I purchased during my abode in Mexico. There can be no doubt, that they are lists formed by the collectors of tributes, tlacalaquiltecani; but is not easy to indicate the objects designated in these lists. No. 1 makes part of a codex Mexicanus of agave paper, which is three or four metres in length; and appears to be a register of maize, gold ingots, and other productions, which composed the tribute, tequitl. I am absolutely ignorant what the painter meant to indicate by the great number of small squares symmetrically 81 disposed. In the second row, reckoning from right to left, we find four hieroglyphics, which follow each other in a periodical series. The days marked here and there denote the times at which the tribute was to be paid. No. 2, 3, 4. What explanation can we give of these women's heads placed near the sign of 20? The cocks and turkeys, delineated in No. 3, might lead us to think, that these birds were equally known to the Mexicans before the conquest; if it were sufficiently proved, that the paintings, from which these figures are taken, date farther back than the 15th century. I have shown in another; work, * that the cock of the Indies, known in the islands of the South Sea, was introduced into America by the Europeans. The tlamama, or porters, No. 5, appear to hold stalks of maize, or sugar-canes, in their hands. I shall not undertake to determine the species of animals beneath the tlamama, and somewhat resembling the tochtli, or Mexican rabbit. No. 7 points out the kind of punishment, which was inflicted on the unhappy natives when they did not pay the tribute at the time proscribed. Three Indians, whose hands are tied behind their backs, appear to be condemned to __________ * Political Essay, vol. 2, p. 452. 82 the gallows. The lists of tributes were placed in each parish, before the eyes of the tequitqui, or tributaries; and the collectors were accustomed to add, at the bottom of the list, the nature of the punishment, to be inflicted on those who were not obedient to the law. |
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83 IN THE BORGIAN MUSEUM, AT VELETRI. PLATE XXXVII. We have already * spoken of the arrangement of the Codex Mexicanus preserved in the Borgian Museum. As we cannot hope to see the whole of this Mexican ritual published, I have brought together on the same plate a great number of figures, remarkable for their forms, and their relations to the manners of a people both superstitious and ferocious. No. 1. (Cod. Borg. fol. 11, MSS Fabrega No. 18). The mother of mankind, the serpent woman, Cihuacohuatl, whom the first missionaries denote by the name of Senora de nuestra carne, or Tonacacihua (from tonacayo, our flesh, __________ * Plate 27, page 34. 84 and cihua woman). Compare the Codex Vaticanus, pl. 13, N. 2. No. 2. The same serpent woman, the Eve of the Mexicans. The rabbit, tochtli, placed on the right, indicates the first year of the world, each cycle beginning by the sign of the rabbit. P. Fabrega pretends, in his Commentary, that the mother of mankind is represented in a state of humiliation, eating cuitlatl (______). No. 3. (Cod. Borg. fol. 58, MSS No. 275). The Lord of the place of the dead, Michtlanteuhtli, * devouring a child. No. 4. (Cod. Borg. fol. 21. MSS No. 98). Noah in his old age, with a long beard, Huehuetonacateocipactli; from huehue, old, tonacayo, our flesh, teotl, god, and cipactli. See the explanations given, page 23, and vol. xiii, p. 338. This same figure is found again in the Codex Borg. folio 60. No. 5. (Cod. Borg.. fol. 56, MSS No. 205). The same divinities as we find in the hideous group, plate 29; namely, the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, with a club in his hand, and the goddess Teayamiqui. They are pictured sitting on a human skull. I have copied only the, goddess, holding in her left band a kind of sceptre, which is terminated by a hand. This sceptre is called Maquahitl, from maitl, a hand, __________ * Plate 29, fig. 5, page 47. 85 and quahuitl, wood. It is no doubt very remarkable, that we find in the Azteck paintings a hand of justice, like that which is represented on the seal of Hugh Capet, * and which reminds us of the manus erecta of the Roman cohorts. † No. 6. Teocipactli, the same figure as is represented No. 4. I have chosen it on account of the extraordinary shape of the forehead. The forehead of the natives of Mexico and Peru are in general singularly flattened, and the painters endeavour to exaggerate this character in representing heroical personages. No. 7. (Cod. Borg. fol. 33, MSS No. 150). Five little imps, which remind us of the celebrated picture of the Temptation of St. Anthony. On the same page is represented a temple of Quetzalcohuatl, the triangular roof of which is surrounded by a serpent. The idol, placed in a niche, receives the offering of a human heart. By the side of the temple, we see the goddess of __________ * Montfaucon, Monuments of the French Monarchy, vol. i, page 36; Menestrier, nouvelle Methode raisonn<ée de Blason (Lyon, 1750) page 52; Dictionnaire de Trevoux, tom. iii, page 127: Gilbert Devarennes (Paris, 1635) page 184. † Augustinus, Antiquitat. Romanor. Hispaniarumque in Nummis Veterum Dialogi (Antverp 1654) p. 18; Lipsius de Militia Romana, page 41. 86 Hell. Mictlanteuhcihua, stretching out her arms toward the body of the victim. No 8. (Cod. Borg. fol. 47, MSS No. 210). The astrological sign nahui Ollin tonatiuh, the Sun inits four motions; which, by prints of feet, or xocpalli, seems to remind us of the positions of the Sun at thezenith, in the equator, and at the solstices. * At the side we find the dates of the days presided over by theasterisms ozomatli, ape; calli, house; and quiahuitl, rain. If these dates were 8 rain, 5 house, and 3 ape, they would answer, according to the disposition of the periodical series, to the days in which the Sun is at one of the tropics, at the equator, and in the zenith of the city of Mexico; but the ciphers added to the hieroglyphics differ several units from those which we have just mentioned. The sign ollin is placed at the extremity of a cylindrical insect, which appears to be a millipede or scolopendra. I am ignorant of the signification of the astrological symbol, which resembles a cross. No. 9. (Cod. Borg. fol. 59). A man and a woman folding children in their arms, and raising one hand toward Heaven. No. 10. (Cod. Borg. fol. 23, MSS No. 94). The drinking devil, Tlacatecolutl motlatlaperiani, __________ * See vol. xiii. page 352 and 399. 87 holding a heart in one hand, and drinking the blood of another heart, while a third is suspended from his neck. This hideous figure confirms what we have already advanced * respecting the ferocity of the Mexican people. __________ * Page 44. |
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88 OF THE AZTECK NATIONS, FROM A HIEROGLYPHIC PAINTING DEPOSITED IN THE ROYAL L1BRARY AT B E R L I N. PLATE XXXVIII. This ill preserved fragment appears to have made part of a great picture, which formerly belonged to the collection of the Chevalier Boturini. The figures are very clumsily painted on amatl, or paper of maguey (agave americana). We behold in it a marshy country on the left, indicated by the hieroglyphic of water, atl; prints of feet, xocpal-machiotl, representing the migrations of a warlike people; arrows shot from one bank of a river toward the other; combats between 89 two nations, one of which is armed with bucklers. and the other naked and without means of defence. It is probable, that these combats designate some of those, which took place in the sixth century of our era, in the wars of the Aztecks against the Otomites and other hunting nations, that dwelt on the north and the west of the valley of Mexico. The figures placed near the hieroglyphic calli, house, perhaps indicate the foundation of certain towns. The bucklers of the Aztecks are ornamented with arms peculiar to each tribe, and have those appendages of leather, or cotton, well fitted to deaden the stroke of a dart, which are found on some Etruscan vases. * The figures are disposed in symmetrical order. We might be surprised at seeing them use their left hand rather than their light; but we have had occasion already to remark, that the hands are often confounded in the Mexican paintings, as well as in several Egyptian bas-reliefs. __________ * See plate 14, No. 2. |
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90 FOUND ON THE COAST OF HONDURAS. PLATE XXXIX. These granite vases, which are four times as large as they appear in the 39th plate, are preserved in England in the collections of Lord Hillsborough and Mr. Brander. They were found on the Moschetto shore, in a country inhabited at present by a barbarous nation, entirely ignorant of sculpture. They are described by Mr. Thomas Pownal, in the interesting Memoirs published by the Antiquarian Society of London. * I have introduced these drawings, to point out the analogy that exists between the ornaments with which they are decorated, and those on the ruins of Mitla. This analogy __________ * Archaeologia, or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity, published by the Soc. of Antiquaries of London, vol. v, plate 26, p. 318. 91 entirely destroys the suspicion, that they were made after the conquest by Indians, who attempted to imitate the form of some Spanish vase. We know, that the Toltecks, in their passage through the province of Oaxaca, penetrated even beyond the lake of Nicaragua. We may hence conjecture, that these vases, ornamented with the heads of birds and tortoises, are the work of some tribe of the Tolteck race. If we reflect on the form of the vessels in domestic use among the Spaniards of the 16th century, it is impossible to admit, that the soldiers of Cortez carried to Mexico vases similar to those, which Mr. Pownal has described. |
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92 IN BASALT, FOUND IN THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. PLATE XL. This small idol in porous basalt, which I have deposited in the cabinet of the king of Prussia, reminds us of the statue of the priestess, placed at the head of this part of our work. * We find the same head-dress, which resembles the calantica of the heads of Isis; the pearls of California, which surround the forehead; and the bag tied with a knot, and terminated by two appendages that reach to the middle of the body. The circular hole in the breast appears to have served __________ * Vol. xiii, plate 1 and 2, page 43. 93 as the receptacle of the incense (copalli or xochitlenamactli), which was burnt before the idols. I am ignorant what the figure holds in its left hand; the forms are highly incorrect, and everything about it indicates the infancy of the art. |
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94 OF T U R B A C O. PLATE XLI. In order to avoid the excessive heats, and the diseases which take place during the summer at Carthagena, and on the arid coasts of Baru and Tierra Bomba, those Europeans, who are not seasoned to the climate, remove inland to the village of Turbaco. This small Indian village stands on a hill, at the entrance of a majestic forest, which extends toward the south and the cast as far as the canal of Mahates and the river Magdalena. The houses are mostly built of bamboos, and covered with palm leaves. Here and there limpid springs rise out of a calcareous rock, which contains numerous fragments of 95 petrified coral, and are shaded by the splendid foliage of the anacardium caracoli, a tree of colossal size, to which the natives attribute the property of attracting from great distances the vapours floating in the atmosphere. As the soil of Turbaco is more than three hundred metres above the level of the ocean, a delightful coolness prevails, especially during the night. We resided in this charming spot in the month of April, 1801, when, after a toilsome passage from the island of Cuba to Carthagena, we were preparing ourselves for a long journey to Santa Fé de Bogota, and the elevated plain of Quito. The Indians of Turbaco, who (accompanied us in our herbalizations, often spoke to us of a marshy country, situate amidst a forest of palm trees, and called by the Creoles the little Volcanoes, los Volcancitos. They related, that according to a tradition still existing among them, this spot, had formerly been in flames; but that a very pious man, vicar of the village, had succeeded by his frequent aspersions of holy water in extinguishing the subterraneous fire. They added, that, since this time, the fiery volcano had become a water volcano, volcan de agua. From our long residence in the Spanish colonies, we were familiar with the strange and marvellous stories, which the natives eagerly recite, to fix the 96 attention of travellers on the phenomena of nature; though we knew that these stories were in general less indebted to their currency to the superstition of the Indians, than to that of the Whites, the mestizoes, and the African slaves; and that the reveries of a few individuals, who reason on the progressive changes of the surface of the Globe, gradually assume the character of historical traditions. Without giving any credit to the existence of an extent of country in a former state of ignition, we were conducted by the Indians to the Volcancitos de Turbaco; and this excursion made us acquainted with phenomena, much more important than any we could have expected. The Volcancitos are situate six thousand metres to the east of the village of Turbaco, in a thick forest, abounding with balsam of Tolu trees, the gustavia with flowers resembling those of the nymphea, and the cavanillesia mocundo, the membranous and transparent fruits of which resemble lanterns suspended at the extremity of the branches. The ground rises gradually forty or fifty metres above the village of Turbaco; but as it is everywhere covered with vegetation, it is not possib |
