ca, worshipped an ETERNAL FIRE. Both from their
records and traditions, as well as their existing monuments, this
deduction is irresistible. Not only the Olmecs and Toltecs, who built
the temples of the sun and moon, near the lake of Tezcuco--not only the
Auricaneans, who obeyed the voice of the First Inca, in erecting the
temple of the Sun at the foot of the Andes; but the Aztecs, even at the
later and more corrupted period of their rites, adhered strongly to
this fundamental rite. It is to be traced from the tropical latitudes
into the Mississippi valley, where the earth-mound it is apprehended,
rudely supplied the place of its more gorgeous, southern prototype.
When they had raised the pile of earth as high as their means and skill
dictated, facts denote that they erected temples and altars at its
apex. On these altars, tradition tells us, they burned the tobacco
plant, which maintains its sacred character unimpaired to the present
day. From the traditions which are yet extant in some of the tribes,
they regarded the sun as the symbol of _Divine Intelligence_. They paid
him no human sacrifices, but offered simply incense, and dances and
songs. They had an order of priesthood, resembling the ancient magi,
who possessed the highest influence and governed the destinies of the
tribes. It is past all doubt that Manco Capac, was himself one of these
magi: and it is equally apparent, that the order exists at this day,
although shorn of much of its ancient, external splendor, in the solemn
_metais_, and sacrificial _jossakeeds_, who sway the simple multitudes
in the North American forests. Among these tribes, the graphic
_Ke-ke-win_, which depicts the Sun, stands on their pictorial rolls, as
the symbol of the Great Spirit; and no important rite or ceremony is
undertaken without an offering of tobacco. This weed is lit with the
sacred element, generated anew on each occasion, from percussion. To
light and to put out this fire, is the symbolic language for the
opening and closing of every important civil or religious public
transaction, and it is the most sacred rite known to them. It is never
done without an appeal, which has the characteristics of prayer, to the
Great Spirit. To find in America, a system of worship which existed in
Mesopotamia, in the era of the patriarch Job, one thousand five hundred
and fifty years before the advent of Christ, is certainly remarkable,
and is suggestive both of the antiquity and origin of th