Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/220

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
202
ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.

shippers; for we are told "they were enamored of the light and beauty of the sun," and they built a high place for his worship.

The pyramid of Cholula is one of the greatest constructions ever erected by human hands. It is even now, in its ruined condition, 160 feet high, 1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty-five acres; we have only to remember that the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, covers but twelve or thirteen acres, to form some conception of the magnitude of this American structure.

It must not be forgotten that this legend was taken down by a Catholic priest, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, from the lips of an old Indian who was born before Columbus sailed from Spain.

Observe the resemblances between this legend and the Bible account of the building of the Tower of Babel:

"All was a plain without hill or elevation," says the Indian legend. "They found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there," says the Bible. They built of brick in both cases. "Let us build us a tower whose top may reach unto heaven," says the Bible. "They determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky," says the Indian legend. "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had builded. And the Lord said, Behold . . . nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and confound them," says the Bible record. "The Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, 'Have you observed,' etc. Come and confound them," says the Indian record. "And the Lord scattered them abroad from thence on all the face of the earth," says the Bible. "They scattered its builders to all parts of the earth," says the Mexican legend.

Can any one doubt that these two legends must have sprung in some way from one another, or from some common source? There are enough points of difference to show that the Amer-