n New Spain,
one of whom, long resident in that country, and professing to have
visited every part of it, says that "at this day there does not remain
the smallest vestige of any Indian building, public or private, either
in Mexico or any province of New Spain." Robertson's informants were
probably foreign merchants resident in the city of Mexico, whose
travels had been confined to the beaten road, and to places occupied by
the Spaniards; and at that time the white inhabitants were in utter
ignorance of the great cities, desolate and in ruins, that lay buried
in the forests. But at this day better information exists; vast remains
have been brought to light, and the discoveries prove incontestably
that those histories which make no mention of these great buildings are
imperfect, those which deny their existence are untrue. The graves cry
out for the old historians, and the mouldering skeletons of cities
confirm Herrera's account of Yucatan, that "there were so many and such
stately Stone Buildings that it was Amazing; and the greatest Wonder
was that, having no Use of any Metal, they were able to raise such
Structures, which seem to have been Temples, for their Houses were all
of Timber, and thatched." And again, he says, that "for the Space of
twenty Years there was such Plenty throughout the Country, and the
People multiplied so much that Men said the whole Province looked like
one Town."

These arguments then--the want of tradition, the degeneracy of the
people, and the alleged absence of historical accounts--are not
sufficient to disturb my belief, that the great cities now lying in
ruins were the works of the same races who inhabited the country at the
time of the conquest.

Who these people were, whence they came, and who were their
progenitors, are questions that involve too many considerations to be
entered upon at the conclusion of these pages; but all the light that
history sheds upon them is dim and faint, and may be summed up in few
words.

According to traditions, picture writings, and Mexican manuscripts
written after the conquest, the Toltecs, or Toltecans, were the first
inhabitants of the land of Anahuac, now known as New Spain or Mexico,
and they are the oldest nations on the continent of America of which we
have any knowledge. Banished, according to their own history, from
their native country, which was situated to the northwest of Mexico, in
the year 596 of our era, they proceeded southward under