the Pyramid of Cholula. That recorded
by Humboldt on the authority of a certain Dominican friar, Pedro de los
Rios, I mention--not because of its intrinsic value, which is very
slight, but because it will enable us to see the way in which legends
grew up under the hands of the early missionaries, who were delighted
to find fragments of Scripture-history among the traditions of the
Ancient Mexicans, and who seem to have taken down from the lips of
their converts, as native traditions, the very Bible-stories that they
had been teaching them, mixed however with other details, of which it
is hard to say whether they were imagined on purpose to fill up gaps in
the story, or whether they were really of native traditional origin.

Pedro de los Rios' story tells us that the land of Anahuac was
inhabited by giants; that there was a great deluge, which devastated
the earth; that all the inhabitants were turned into fishes, except
seven who took refuge in a cave (apparently with their wives). Years
after the waters had subsided, and the earth had been re-peopled by
these seven men, their leader began to build a vast pyramid, whose top
should reach to heaven. He built it of bricks baked in the sun, which
were brought from a great distance, passing them from hand to hand by a
file of men. The gods were enraged at the presumption of these men, and
they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its
building to be discontinued. It is stated that at the time of the
Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great
veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that
fell upon the top of the pyramid when the fire struck it.

The history of the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in
the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been
learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been
connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula. Something like it
at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced
in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues
to a crowd of men standing below.

I think we need not hesitate in condemning the legend of Cholula, which
I have just related, as not genuine, or at least as partly of late
fabrication. But we fortunately possess another version of it, which
shows the legend to have developed itself farther than was quite
discreet. A MS. history, written by Duran in 1579, a