ancient and modern history in these wilds. The grave and dignified air of Wa-manetouka contributed to the majesty of the ceremony; on this occasion he assumed a sacerdotal kind of air; he consecrated the Calmut, turning the tube first horizontally to heaven, and to earth, east, and west, invoking the GREAT SPIRIT."

Of a hunting expedition, at which he was present, he thus writes: "The chief who accompanied me with M. Renville, let fly his arrow and shot a buffalo," &c. "Never did I see attitudes so graceful as those of the chief. They alternately reminded me of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on the capitol, and that of the great Numidian king. Altogether it was the most astonishing spectacle I ever saw; I thought I beheld the combatants and games of the ancients. I played nearly the same part as the Indians of former times did in thinking the first Spanish beings of superior order. While the chief with his quiver, his horse, and his victim, formed a group worthy of the pencil of Raphael or the chisel of Canova."-Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi.

180

TRADITIONS.

THE Commentator on the Antiq. Mexico observes, "They represent Eve as always weeping as she looks at her husband, Adam. She is called, Yexnextli, which signifies eyes blinded by ashes, and this refers to her condition after having plucked the roses. These roses are elsewhere called, "Fruta del arbor," (" fruit of the tree.") They fasted eight days preceding the sign of one rose; they say all the days of the Calendar apply to this fall, because on such a day, transgression was first committed. The sign of one cane was dedicated to heaven as that of one rose was to hell.

Torquemeda in the thirty-first chapter of his Mex. Mon. gives the following description of the goddess Cihuacohuatl,1 who is named by many writers the Aztec, or Mexican Eve. One of the goddesses greatly esteemed by the natives of New Spain, was Cihuacohuatl, which name signifies the woman serpent," and they say she always brings forth two children at a birth. This woman, Father Sahagun says, was the first who existed in the world, and the mother of

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1 Humboldt says, 'The group No.2, represent the serpent-woman Cihuacohuatl, called also Quelazili, or Tonachcitua, (woman of our flesh) she is the companion of Tona-teutli. The Mexicans considered her as the mother of human kind, &c. We see her always represented with a green serpent. Other pictures represent the feather-headed snake cut in pieces by the great Spirit Tezcatlipoca. These allegories remind us of the ancient tradition of Asia. In the woman-serpent of the Aztecs, we think we perceive the Eve of the Semetic nations, &c. Behind the serpent, who appears to be speaking to the goddess Cihuacohuatl, are two naked figures, they are different colours, and are in the attitudes of contending with each other. We might be led to suppose that the vases, one of which they have overturned, is the cause of contention. The serpent-woman was considered in Mexico as the mother of twin children. They remind us of the Cain and Abel of the Hebrew tradition.'-Pp. 196, 197.

the whole human race; who was tempted by the serpent who appeared to her in the terrestrial paradise, and discoursed with her, to persuade her to transgress the command of God, and that is likewise true, that after having committed sin, &c. she bore a son, and a daughter at the same birth, and that the son was named Cain and the daughter Calmana; and that afterwards she brought forth at a second birth, Abel, and his sister, Delborah, so that she bore them by twin births. The Mexicans therefore designated her for these two properties, Cihuacohuatl, which signifies the woman serpent, that is to say, whom the serpent tempted, and which also signified the woman who brought forth twins, a boy and a girl; for they call infants born at the same birth, Cocohua, or serpents, born from the woman serpent."

The above account of Torquemeda, or rather of Sahagun, whose authority he cites, is very curious, and is further confirmed by the representation in the forty-eighth page of the lesser Vatican MS. of Cihuacohuatl, or Suchequecal, with two infants and a serpent near her. Another painting contained in the seventy-fourth page of the same MS. is more remarkable, since it seems clearly to allude to the threat pronounced in the third chapter of Genesis, against the serpent, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman," &c. as in fact the Seed of the woman appears to be there in the act of bruising the head of the serpent with a staff, whilst the latter has bitten, and is holding in his jaws, the foot of his adversary."

"The present note," adds the Commentator, "contains some ancient traditions evidently derived from the Old Testament, and tending to prove that the Indians were at least acquainted with that portion of it designated the Pentateuch."

"It is impossible on reading what Mexican Mythology

records of the war in Heaven and the fall of Zontemoque, and the other rebellious spirits; of the creation of Light by the WORD of Tonacatlecutli, and of the dividing of the waters; of the sin of Yzclacolinhqui, his blindness and nakedness; of the temptation of Suchequecal,1 and her disobedience in plucking the roses from a tree, and the consequent misery of herself and all her posterity, not to recognize scriptural analogies and that the Mexican tradition of the deluge is that which bears the most unequivocal marks of having been derived from a Hebrew source.

"This tradition records that a few persons escaped in the Ahuchueti, or Ark of fir, when the earth was swallowed up by the deluge, the chief of whom was Palecath, or Cipaquetona, that he invented the art of making wine; that Xelua, one of his descendants was present at the building of a high Tower which the succeeding generation constructed with a view of escaping from the deluge should it again occur; that Tonacatecutli, incensed at their presumption, destroyed the Tower with lightning, confounded their language and dispersed them. This age, called by them Atonatiali, or the age of water, closely bordered upon that of Tzocnilliexque, or age of giants, and it will be recollected that the age of the flood in scripture, was that of the giants also."

"The fact of the Mexicans recording both in their paintings and songs, the Deluge, the building the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion, &c. being generally admitted by the Spanish writers on America, it is almost unnecessary to the authority of any particular author, to prove what no one will deny; since Gomara, in his

1 It seems much more according to the genius of the Mexican religion, that this should allude to Eve, as the representative of that woman whose Seed by them designated TEO-piltzin and Topiltzin, (God's son and our son), than as the serpent woman,' as the name indicates."

history of the Indians, describing the conference of Nicaragua with Gil Goncales and the Calezcasters, introduces this chief as putting a variety of questions to the Spaniards. The first of which was, whether they were acquainted with the deluge, and others no less curious, showing that the Indians were not unaccustomed to abstruse speculation, and that besides the knowledge of many traditions contained in the Old Testament, they possessed some information respecting the New. It may be interesting to insert the entire passage of GOMARA, giving an account of this conference. Nicaragua, who was so acute and skilled in the knowledge of the rites and antiquities of his own countrymen, had a long conference with Gil Goncales, and the ecclesiastic. He inquired if the Christians were acquainted with the great deluge which had swallowed up the earth, men and animals, &c.; and whether the earth was to be revolutionized, (trastornár) or the firmament to remove? When and how the sun, moon, and stars, would be deprived of their light? What was the honour and reverence due to the triune God, &c. where souls go after death, and what would be their occupation, &c. He likewise inquired if the Holy Father of Rome, the vicar of Christ, who was the God of the Christians, died, and whether the Emperor of Spain who had the virtue and power they vaunted so much was mortal; and why such an handful of men were anxious to obtain so much gold!" La Historia de los Indios. vol. viii. In Antiq. Mex. vol. vi.

"A very remarkable representation of the ten plagues which God sent on Egypt, occur in the eleventh and twelfth pages of the Borgian Ms. Moses is there painted holding up in his left hand, his rod, which became a serpent; and, with a furious gesture, calling down the plagues upon the Egyptians. These plagues were frogs, locusts, lice, flies,