a cane, a knife, and three foot-prints. But to do justice to this subject, it would be necessary to enter into much minuter details.*

Lastly, were every thing else wanting, the clear traditions so vividly preserved among the Americans of man's early history, of the flood and the dispersion, so exactly conformable to those of the old world, must remove every hesitation regarding their origin. The Azteks, Mitteks, Flascalteks, and other nations, had innumerable paintings of these latter events. Tezpi or Coxcox, as the American Noah is called, is seen floating in an ark upon the waters, and with him his wife, children, many animals, and several species of grain. When the waters withdrew, Tezpi sent out a vulture, which, being able to feed on the carcases of the drowned, returned no more. After the experiment had failed with several others, the humming-bird at length came back, bearing a green branch in its little beak. In the same hieroglyphic painting, the dispersion of mankind is thus represented. The first men after the deluge were dumb; and a dove is seen perched upon a tree, giving to each a tongue, the consequence whereof is, that the families, fifteen in number, disperse in different directions. This

* See the comparative plates, &c. in the 2nd vol. of the Views of the Cordilleras.

+ Humboldt, ib. pp. 65, 66.

coincidence, which reminds me that I am still indulging in digression, would alone be sufficient to establish a link of close connexion between the nations of the two continents. But, in fact, so numerous, so extraordinary, and so minute, are the resemblances between them, that in a publication of which I must say a few words, two long and elaborate dissertations have been inserted, to prove that Jews first, and then Christians, colonized America.*

The work to which I allude, is the truly royal collection of Mexican monuments, published by Lord Kingsborough, a treasure of materials for such as dedicate themselves to their study. It seems impossible to look through these splendid volumes without being struck with the varied character of art therein exhibited. The hieroglyphic figures representing the human form in squat and distorted proportions, have nothing in common with the sculptured reliefs. Here we have tall figures standing in warlike attitudes; there, females sitting cross-legged upon doubleheaded monsters, with children in their arms, their necks surrounded by strings of pearls, their heads crowned with conical and fretted headdresses, sometimes formed of animals; in another place we meet the tortoise, the sacred emblem of

The antiquities of Mexico, published by A. Aglio, vol. vi. pp. 232-409, and 409-420.

India; in another we see the serpent winding round the tree, or men threatened to be swallowed by misshapen monsters; so that we imagine ourselves to be examining the sculptures of some Indian cavern, or ancient pagoda.* And I would add, that the type of countenance in these sculptures is no way American, but strongly recals to mind the early Indian manner. Then we have another class of monuments, equally distinct, and seeming to harmonize with Egyptian art. We have pyramids constructed upon the same model, and apparently for the same purposes; we have figures closely wrapped up, so that only the feet below, and the hands at either side, appear, as in Egyptian statues; while the head-dress surrounds the head and drops down at each side, pushing forward enormous ears: besides other kneeling figures, where this attire is still more marked, so that, as Enea Quirino Visconti observed, they might have been copied from the portico at Dendara, whose capitals they exactly resemble. In figures, too, of this class, the physiognomy is by no means the same as in the former, but of a character more suiting the style of art.†

Who shall solve this riddle for us, and say whether these resemblances are accidental, or

* See vol. iv. part i. Fig. 20, 36; 27, 28, 32: Specimens of Mexican sculpture, in possession of M. Latour Allard at Paris, fig. 15, part iii. fig. 8.

+ See ib. p. i. fig. 1, seqq: 48. Latour's mon.

figg. 8, 14, &c.

produced by some actual communication? Assuredly this is yet a land of mystery and clouds, and much study is yet requisite, to clear up anomalies, to reconcile contradictions, and place our knowledge upon a stabler footing. We cannot even remove difficulties of this nature nearer our own time; we cannot, for instance, explain how, as Muratori has proved, Brazil wood should be entered among the taxable commodities, at the gates of Modena, in 1306: or how Andrea Bianco's map, preserved in St. Mark's Library at Venice, and constructed in 1436, should place an island in the Atlantic, with the very name Brasile. How much more must we be involved in difficulties, when we attempt to unravel the intricacies of primeval records, or reconstruct an early history from a few fragmentary monuments.

And in conclusion, I would remark, that many other problems there are, in the history of languages, which enter into the mysteries of nature, and have their solution involved in those hidden laws of her constitution, that form her links with the moral ordinance of the world. For, it might be asked, how is it that languages so easily sprung up in early ages, which till now have remained unchanged; or rather, how were their first families so soon divided into dialects, essentially fixed and independent, while in the progress of time mankind have formed little more than dialects of these, provincial idioms or manifest derivations, hardly

any farther prolific? For, within a very short period after the dispersion, must the Sanskrit, the Greek, and the Latin, or, at least, its parenttongue, have separated from one another, and received their marked characteristic forms: and in the Semitic family the separation must have been equally early. Now, as well might we ask, why the oak, only near its roots, sends forth huge gigantic branches, each whereof shall of itself seem large enough to form another tree, and have its own dominion of boughs, and its own crown of yearly shoots, while later it can only put forth a punier and less vigorous offspring, wherein the generating virtue seems almost exhausted. And truly there is a sap in nations as well as in trees, a vigorous inward power, ever tending upwards, drawing its freshest energies from the simplest institutions, and the purest virtues, and the healthiest moral action. While these form the soil wherein a people is, as it were, deeply rooted, its powers are almost boundless; and, as these alter and become exhausted, it likewise will be weakened, and decay. Assuredly, there was a vigour in the human mind, as compared with ours, gigantic, when the Homeric songs were the poetry of the wandering minstrel, when shepherdchiefs, like Abraham, could travel from nation to nation, and even associate with their kings, and when an infant people could imagine and execute monuments like the Egyptian pyramids.