uable treatise on comets. He was also the editor of the Mercurio Volante, and was a man of sound judgment and high attainments. Pedro Alarcon and others afterward distinguished themselves in mathematics and astronomy.
It is wonderful how both government and people neglected the relics of New Spain, superior, in many directions, to those of Egypt, and worthy of comparison with those of the middle epoch of Greece. Indeed, they were looked on as devices of the devil, and devoted to extermination. — A few papers and figures were, however, sent to Spain, and roused a spirit of inquiry, which, in modern times, has had brilliant results. The follies of vandalism, such as Zumárraga's, Sahagun redeemed by collecting from Indians of the conquest data on their manners and customs, modes of education, and knowledge. Much of his work was mutilated by narrow-mindedness, but Torquemada, in his Monarquía, saved much of it. The mestizo Father Duran's work met with the same fate as Sahagun's. Acosta brought the result of his labors at an earlier date before the world.
Collections of original documents, in the hands of native nobles, like Ixtlilxochitl, were allowed to be scattered, and only remnants escaped destruction, through the more enlightened care of Sigüenza, Veytia, Ortega, Pichardo, and a few others. Boturini spent six years in gathering several hundred papers and curiosities, which are partly preserved in Kingsborough's great work.[1] Mariano Veytia, a learned
- ↑ The task of utilizing Boturini's unearthed documents was reserved for Veytia, Clavigero, and subsequent modern students, better fitted for it than himself; for his Idea is a curious medley of interesting facts and puerilities, connected by a thread of fantastic speculation. He had completed, in 1749, the first volume of his Cronologia de las Principales Naciones, which, owing to his death soon after, was never published. But a Cronica Mexicana, Teonmóxtli, was issued by Bustamante at Mexico, in 1821-2, and shows the primary motive which impelled Boturini to undertake his task, and which must have unfitted him for writing history — a pious zeal to substantiate the apparition of the virgin of Guadalupe. Of his apologetic dissertation on the subject, a fragment remains in Latin. Some of his acts, regarded as unwarranted by a foreigner, led to his arrest, the confiscation of his papers, and his being sent to Spain, where, his motives being declared pure, he was appointed historiographer of the Indies. His death occurred soon after, and his papers became scattered or destroyed; but a few remain in the museum of Mexico.
