Conquest of Mexico
Page 386 (1).—"The general question of the first origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits assigned to History; perhaps it is not even a problem for philosophy."—Humboldt, Essai Politique, tom. i. p. 349.
Page 386 (2).—Ante, vol. i. p. 39.
Page 386 (3).—The fanciful division of time into four or five cycles or ages was found among the Hindoos (Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. mem. 7), the Thibetians (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 210), the Persians (Bailly, Traité de I'Astronomie [Paris, 1787], tom. i. discours préliminaire), the Greeks (Hesiod, Works and Days, v. 108 et seq.), and other people, doubtless. The five ages in the Grecian cosmogony had reference to moral rather than physical phenomena,—a proof of higher civilisation.
Page 386 (4).—The Chaldean and Hebrew accounts of the Deluge are nearly the same. The parallel is pursued in Palfrey's ingenious Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities (Boston, 1840), vol. ii. lect. 21, 22. Among the Pagan writers, none approach so near to the Scripture narrative as Lucian, who, in his account of the Greek traditions, speaks of the ark, and the pairs of different kinds of animals. (De Dea Syria, sec. 12.) The same thing is found in the Bhagawatn Purana, a Hindoo poem of great antiquity. (Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. mem. 7.) The simple tradition of a universal inundation was preserved among most of the aborigines, probably, of the Western World.—See M'Culloh, Researches, p. 147.
Page 387 (1).—This tradition of the Aztecs is recorded in an ancient hieroglyphical map, first published in Gemelli Carreri's Giro del Mondo. (See tom. vi. p. 38, ed. Napoli, 1700.) Its authenticity, as well as the integrity of Carreri himself, on which some suspicions have been thrown (see Robertson's America [London, 1796], vol. iii. note 26), has been successfully vindicated by Boturini, Clavigero, and Humboldt, all of whom trod in the steps of the Italian traveller. (Boturini, Idea, p. 54.—Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, pp. 223, 224.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 24.) The map is a copy from one in the curious collection of Siguenza. It has all the character of a genuine Aztec picture, with the appearance of being retouched, especially in the costumes, by some later artist. The painting of the four ages, in the Vatican Codex, No. 3730, represents, also, the two figures in the boat, escaping the great cataclysm.—Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. pli. 7.
Page 387 (2).—I have met with no other voucher for this remarkable tradition than Clavigero (Stor. del Messico, dissert, 1); a good, though certainly not the best, authority, when he gives us no reason for our faith. Humboldt, however, does not distrust the tradition. (See Vues des Cordillères, p. 226.) He is not so sceptical as Vater, who, in allusion to the stories of the Flood, remarks, "I have purposely omitted noticing the resemblance of religious notions, for I do not see how it is possible to separate from such views every influence of Christian ideas, if it be only from an imperceptible confusion in the mind of the narrator."—Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde (Berlin, 1812), theil iii. abtheil 3, p. 82, note.
Page 387 (3).—This story, so irreconcilable with the vulgar Aztec tradition, which admits only two survivors of the Deluge, was still lingering among the natives of the place, on M. de Humboldt's visit there. (Vues des Cordillères, pp. 31, 32.) It agrees with that given by the interpreter of the Vatican Codex (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 192 et seq.); a writer,-—probably a monk of the sixteenth century,—in whom ignorance and dogmatism contended for mastery. See a precious specimen of both, in his account of the Aztec chronology, in the very pages above referred to.
Page 387 (4).—A tradition, very similar to the Hebrew one, existed among the Chaldeans and the Hindoos. (Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. mem. 16.) The natives of Chiapa, also, according to the bishop Nuñez de la Vega, had a story, cited as genuine by Humboldt (Vues des Cordillères, p. 148), which not only agrees with the Scripture account of the manner in which Babel was built, but with that of the subsequent dispersion, and the confusion of tongues. A very marvellous456
