from one mountain to another, was six miles in length, eight feet in height, besides the breastworks, and eighteen feet in thickness. It was made of stone and strong fine mortar. There was but one narrow entrance, about eight feet broad and forty paces long. This was the space between the two extremities of the wall, the one of which encircled the other, forming two semicircles with one common centre. There are still some remains of this wall to be seen.*

Quauhquechollan, south, distant about four miles from Tepejacac, was a city containing from five thousand to six thousand families, pleasantly situated, and not less fortified by nature than by art. It was naturally defended on one side by a steep, rocky mountain, and on another side by two parallel-running rivers. The whole of the city was surrounded by a strong wall of stone and lime, about twenty feet high and twelve broad, with a breastwork all round of about three feet in height. There were but four ways to enter, at those places where the extremities of the walls were doubled, forming two semicircles (overlapping one another), with the passage between them. The difficulty of the entrance was increased by the elevation of the site of the city, which was almost equal to the height of the wall itself, so that in order to enter, it was necessary to ascend by some very steep steps. There are also still to be seen the remains of an ancient fortress built upon the top of a mountain, at a little distance from the village of Molcaxac, surrounded by four walls, placed at some distance from each other, from the base of the mountain unto the top. In the neighborhood appeared many small ramparts of stone and lime, and upon a hill two miles distant from the mountain are the remains of some ancient and populous city, of which, however, there is no memory among historians. About twentyfive miles from Cordova, towards the north, is likewise the ancient fortress of Quauhtocho, now Guatusco, surrounded by high walls of extremely hard stone, to which there is no entrance but by ascending a number of very high and narrow steps, for in this manner the entrances to these fortresses were formed. From the ruins of this ancient building, which is now overrun with bushes, a Cordovan gentleman lately dug out several well-finished statues of stones, for the ornament of his house. Near the ancient city

Francisco Severio Clavigero, born at Vera Cruz, South America, about 1720; died at Cesena, in Italy, October, 1793. Cullen's English version of Clavigero's "History of Mexico" in Italian, was published in 1787.-Chambers's Encyclopædia.

of Tezcuco, a part of the wall which surrounded the city of Coatlichan is still preserved.

In regard to the Tlascalan wall, Bernal Diaz says: "We came upon an enormous entrenchment, built so strongly of stone, lime and a kind of hard bitumen, that it would only have been possible to break it down by means of pickaxes, and if defended would have with difficulty been taken. We halted on purpose to inspect this fortification, and Cortes inquired of the Zocotlans for what purpose it stood there. They told him it was built there by the Tlascalans, against the great Montezuma, with whom they were continually at war, to protect them against his hostile incursions."

Torquemada says: "It was a wall of twenty feet in thickness; that it could be defended from the top; had only one entrance, defended by other works within, and was built by a cacique of the country to protect the boundaries of his country against the incursions of the Tlascalans. But the most singular fortifications of Mexico were the temples themselves, and especially the great temple, which resembled a citadel. The wall which surrounded the whole of the temple, the five arsenals there which were filled with every sort of defensive and offensive arms, and the architecture of the temple itself, which rendered the ascent to it so difficult, give us clearly to understand that in such buildings policy as well as religion had a share, and that they constructed them not only from motives of superstition, but likewise for the purpose of defence. It is well known, from their history, that they fortified themselves in their temples when they could not hinder the enemy from entering the city, and from them harassed them with arrows, darts and stones."†

CHAPTER XIV.

The Toltecs Their Migration-Their Character-Their Knowledge of Astronomy-Their National Extinction and Their Dispersion.

THE TOLTECS THE FIRST SETTLERS OF ANAHUAC.

THE history of the first peopling of Anahuac is so involved in fable that it is altogether impossible to discover the truth. There cannot be a doubt that the men who first peopled that country * Whom he calls Yztacmixtitlan. † Clavigero.

came originally from the more northern parts of America, where their ancestors had been settled for many ages, but who these first inhabitants were at the time of their emigration is entirely unknown.

The Toltecs are the oldest nation of which we have any knowledge, and that is very imperfect. Being banished, as they tell us, from their own country, Huehuetlapallan, which we take to have been in the kingdom of Tollan,* from which they derived their name, and situated to the southwest of Mexico. They began their journey in the year 1, Tecpatl—that is, in the year 596 A.D. In every place to which they came they remained no longer than they liked it. In this wandering manner did they travel, always southward, for the space of one hundred and four years, till they arrived at a place to which they gave the name of Tollantzinco, about fifty miles to the east of that spot where, some centuries after, was founded the famous city of Mexico.

They were led and commanded upon the whole journey by certain chiefs, who were reduced to seven by the time they arrived at Tollantzinco. They did not choose, however, to settle in that country. In less than twenty years after they went about forty miles to the west, where, along the banks of a river, they founded the city of Tollan or Tula, after the name of their native country. That city, the oldest, as far as we know, in Anahuac, is one of the most celebrated in the history of Mexico, and was the capital of the Toltecan kingdom. Their monarchy began in the year 607 A.D. and lasted three hundred and eightyfour years.

The Toltecs were the most celebrated people of Anahuac for their superior civilization and skill in the arts. They always lived in society, collected in cities, under the government of kings. and regular laws. They were not very warlike, and less trained to the exercise of arms than to the cultivation of the arts. The nations that have succeeded them have acknowledged themselves indebted to the Toltecs for their knowledge of the culture of grain, cotton, pepper, and other useful fruits. They had the art of casting gold and silver and melting them into whatever form they pleased, and acquired the greatest reputation from cutting all kinds of gems; but nothing, to us, raises their character so high as their having been the inventors, or, at least, the reformers of that system of the arrangement of time which was adopted by all

* " Toltecotl, in Mexican, signifies a native of Tollan, as Tlazcaltecotl does a native of Tlescala."

the nations of Anahuac, and which implies numerous observations and a wonderfully correct astronomy.

Boturini, upon the faith of the ancient histories of the Toltecas, says, that observing in their own country of Huehuetlapallan, how the solar year exceeded the civil one, by which they reckoned, about six hours, they regulated it by interposing the intercalary day once in four years, which they did more than a hundred years before the Christian era. He says, besides, that in the year 660, under the reign of Ixtlalcuechahuac, in Tula, a celebrated astronomer called Huematzin assembled, by the king's consent, all the wise men of the nation, and with them painted that famous book called Teoamoxtli, or Divine Book, in which were represented in very plain figures the origin of the Indian, their journey in Asia, their first settlements upon the continent of America, the founding of the kingdom of Tula, and their progress till that time. There were described the heavens, the planets, the constellations, the Toltecan calendar with its cycles, the mythological transformations, in which were included their moral philosophy, and the mysteries of their deities, concealed by hieroglyphics from common understanding, together with all that appertained to their religion and manners.*

It is certain, however incredible as it may appear to the critics of Europe, who are accustomed to look upon the Americans as all equally barbarous, that the Mexicans and all the other civilized nations of Anahuac regulated their civil year according to the solar by means of the intercalary days, in the same manner as the Romans did after the Julian arrangement; and that this accuracy was owing to the skill of the Toltecas. Their religion was idolatrous, and they appear by their history to have been the inventors of the greatest part of the mythology of the Mexicans; but we do not know that they practiced those barbarous and bloody sacrifices which became afterwards so common among other nations.

The Tezcucan historians believe the Toltecas the authors of that famous idol, representing the god of water, placed on Mount Tlaloe. It is certain that they built in honor of their beloved god

* This shows they must have been highly civilized and intelligent when they left Asia, or that they made wonderful progress in the short space of fifty-seven years from the founding of their city Tula, in Mexico.

†This image was in the shape of a man sitting on a white and very light stone, with a vessel before him in which were some elastic gum and a variety of seeds. This was their yearly offering, by way of rendering thanks after having had a favorable harvest. This image was reckoned the oldest in that country,

Quetzalcoatl, the highest pyramid of Cholula, and probably also the famous ones of Teotihuacan, in honor of the sun and moon, which are still in existence, though much disfigured.

During the four centuries which the monarchy of the Toltecas lasted, they multiplied considerably, extending their population every way in numerous and large cities, but the direful calamities that happened to them in the first year of the reign of Topiltzin gave a fatal shock to their prosperity and power. For several years heaven denied to them the necessary showers to their fields and the earth, the fruits of which supported them. The air, infected with mortal contagion, filled daily the graves with the dead, and the minds of those surviving, with consternation at the destruction of their countrymen. A great part of the nation died by famine and sickness. Topiltzin died in the second year, Tecpatl, in the twentieth of his reign, which was probably the year 1052 of the vulgar era, and with him the Toltecan monarchy concluded. The wretched remains of the nation, willing to save themselves from the common calamity, sought timely relief to their misfortunes in other countries. Some directed their course to Onohualco, or Yucatan, some to Guatemala, while some families stopped in the kingdom of Tula and scattered themselves in the great valley where Mexico was afterwards founded; some in Cholula, Tlaximoloyan, and other places, and among these were the two sons of Topiltzin, whose descendants, in course of time, intermarried with the royal families of Mexico, Tezcuco and Colhuacan.*

After the destruction of the Toltecas, for the space of one century, the land of Anahuac remained solitary and almost entirely depopulated, until the arrival of the Chechemecas.†

for it had been placed upon that hill by the ancient Toltecas. It being replaced by another, the latter was struck by lightning, and the former then restored and continued to be preserved and worshipped until it was thrown down and broken by the order of the first bishop of Mexico.

* The Toltecan Monarchy terminated probably in the year 1052 of the vulgar era. Mexico, city, was founded in the year 1325.' The destruction of the Toltecan monarchy may be but one instance among many where the nations of America have perished by pestilence and famine, and probably wars have been the destruction of many more than have perished by pestilence and famine. "In large states the calamities in one part may be relieved by the prosperity in another, but in small states there are no such advantages, and the inhabitants perish or migrate."

† Torquemada does not allow more than eleven years of interval between the destruction of the Toltecas and the arrival of the Chechemecas. Chechemecas is probably the same as Chetimecas, a tribe of Indians who dwelt on a lake near the Lafourche, in Louisiana, in the year 1703; the latter probably being descended from the former.