(_Rerum Med. Nov. Hisp. Thes.: Rome_, 1631) gives a similar
account of the process. He compares the wooden instrument used to a
cross-bow. It was evidently a T-shaped implement, and the workman held
the cross-piece with his two hands against his breast, while the end of
the straight stick rested on the stone. He furthermore gives a
description of the making of the well-known _maquahuitl_, or Aztec
war-club, which was armed on both sides with a row of obsidian knives,
or teeth, stuck into holes with a kind of gum. With this instrument, he
says, a man could be cut in half at a blow--an absurd statement, which
has been repeated by more modern writers.

II. ON THE SOLAR ECLIPSES RECORDED IN THE LE TELLIER MS.

The curious Aztec Picture-writing, known as the _Codex
Telleriano-Remenensis_, preserved in the Royal Library of Paris,
contains a list or calendar of a long series of years, indicated by the
ordinary signs of the Aztec system of notation of cycles of years.
Below the signs of the years are a number of hieroglyphic pictures,
conveying the record of remarkable events which happened in them, such
as the succession and death of kings, the dates of wars, pestilences,
&c. The great work of Lord Kingsborough, which contains a fac-simile of
this curious document, reproduces also an ancient interpretation of the
matters contained in it, evidently the work of a person who not only
understood the interpretation of the Aztec picture-writings, but had
access to some independent source of information,--probably the more
ample oral traditions, for the recalling of which the picture-writing
appears only to have served as a sort of artificial memory. It is not
necessary to enter here into a fuller description of the MS., which has
also been described by Humboldt and Gallatin.

Among the events recorded in the Codex are four eclipses of the sun,
depicted as having happened in the years 1476, 1496, 1507. 1510.
Humboldt, in quoting these dates, makes a remark to the effect that the
record tends to prove the veracity of the Aztec history, for solar
eclipses really happened in those years, according to the list in the
well-known chronological work, _L'Art de Verifier les Dates_, as
follows: 28 Feb., 1476; 8 Aug., 1496; 13 Jan., 1507; 8 May, 1510. The
work quoted, however, has only reference to eclipses visible in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, and not to those in America. The question therefore
arises, whether all these four eclipses recorde