ublic institutions, language, and laws of that
interesting people.

The extracts I present to the reader may be relied upon as exactly
correct, since they are taken from the memoranda made upon the spot.

Directly in front of the throne, in the great audience-chamber described
in the preceding chapter, and written in the most beautiful hieroglyphic
extant, I found the following account of the origin of the land:

The Great Spirit, whose emblem is the sun, held the water-drops
out of which the world was made, in the hollow of his hand. He
breathed a tone, and they rounded into the great globe, and
started forth on the errand of counting up the years.

Nothing existed but water and the great fishes of the sea. One
eternity passed. The Great Spirit sent a solid star, round and
beautiful, but dead and no longer burning, and plunged it into
the depths of the oceans. Then the winds were born, and the rains
began to fall. The animals next sprang into existence. They came
up from the star-dust like wheat and maize. The round star
floated upon the waters, and became the dry land; and the land
was high, and its edges steep. It was circular, like a plate, and
all connected together.

The marriage of the land and the sea produced man, but his spirit
came from the beams of the sun.

Another eternity passed away, and the earth became too full of
people. They were all white, because the star fell into the cold
seas, and the sun could not darken their complexions.

Then the sea bubbled up in the middle of the land, and the
country of the Aztecs floated off to the west. Wherever the star
cracked open, there the waters rose up and made the deep sea.

When the east and the west come together again, they will fit
like a garment that has been torn.

Then followed a rough outline of the western coasts of Europe and
Africa, and directly opposite the coasts of North and South America.
The projections of the one exactly fitted the indentations of the other,
and gave a semblance of truth and reality to the wild dream of the Aztec
philosopher. Let the geographer compare them, and he will be more
disposed to wonder than to sneer.

I have not space enough left me to quote any further from the monumental
inscriptions, but if the reader be curious upon this subject, I
recommend to his attention the publication soon to come out, alluded to
above.

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