rmit no other offerings to the
Master of Life than the first-fruits of the harvest. "We know by our
traditions," said the venerable Prince Montezuma to the Spanish General
Cortez, "that we who inhabit this country are not the natives but
strangers who come from a great distance."

Don Alonzo Erecella, in his history of Chili, says, the Araucanians
acknowledge one Supreme Being, and believe in the immortality of the
soul; and the Abbe Clavigero declares, that they have a tradition of the
great deluge. The laws and ceremonies of the Peruvians and Mexicans
have, no doubt, been corrupted in the course of many ages, both in their
sacrifices and worship.

Their great and magnificent temple, evidently in imitation of that
erected by Solomon, was founded by Mango Capac, or rather by the Inca
Vupanque, who endowed it with great wealth. Clavagero and De Vega, in
their very interesting account of this temple say, "what we called the
altar was on the east side of the temple. There were many doors to the
temple, all of which were plated with gold, and the four walls the whole
way round were crowned with a rich golden garland, more than an ell in
width. Round the temple were five square pavilions, whose tops were in
the form of pyramids. The fifth was lined entirely with gold, and was
for the use of the Royal High-Priest of sacrifices, and in which all the
deliberations concerning the temple were held. Some of the doors led to
the schools where the Incas listen to the debates of the philosophers,
sometimes themselves explaining the laws and ordinances."

Mexico and Central America abound in curiosities, exemplifying the fact
of the Asiatic origin of the inhabitants; and it is not many years ago,
that the ruins of a whole city, with a wall nearly seven miles in
circumference, with castles, palaces, and temples, evidently of Hebrew
or Phoenician architecture, was found on the river Palenque. The
thirty-fifth number of the Foreign Quarterly Review contains an
interesting account of those antiquities.

The ruins of this city of Guatemala, in Central America, as described by
Del Rio in 1782, when taken in conjunction with the extraordinary, I may
say, wonderful antiquities spread over the entire surface of that
country, awaken recollections in the specimens of architecture which
carry us back to the early pages of history, and prove beyond the shadow
of doubt, that we who imagined ourselves to be the natives of a new
world, bu