370 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ck XX. 



persecutors by putting out to sea and settling in their 

 mountainous island."* 



Let us now return to the Nahuatls, and see if they 

 present any affinities to the nations of the old world. 

 Hurnboldt's well-known argument, in which he sought 

 to prove the Asiatic origin of the Mexicans, was based 

 upon the remarkable resemblance of their system of 

 reckoning cycles of years to that found in use in different 

 parts of Asia. Both the Asiatic and Mexican systems of 

 cycles is most artificial in its construction, and trouble- 

 some in its practice, and they are very unlikely to have 

 arisen independently on two continents. Humboldt says, 

 " I inferred the probability of the western nations of the 

 new continent having had communication with the east of 

 Asia long before the arrival of the Spaniards from a com- 

 parison of the Mexican and Thibeto-Japanese calendars, 

 -from the correct orientation of the steps of the pyramidal 

 elevations towards the different quarters of the heavens, 

 and from the ancient myths and traditions of the four 

 ages or four epochs of destruction of the world, and the 

 dispersion of mankind after a great flood of waters." f 



Whilst there are undoubtedly many curious coinci- 

 dences in the customs of the ancient Mexicans and the 

 peoples of eastern Asia, there are, on the other hand, so 

 many differences that I believe it is safer to infer that 

 they were essentially distinct in origin, but that there 

 had been communication between the two peoples in 

 very early times, so remote that the foreign influence in 

 Mexico was extremely feeble, and too weak to check the 



* E. B. Tylor, Early History of Mankind," pp. 288-297. 

 f Huraboldt, " Aspects of Nature," vol. ii. p. 174. 



