THE METAL ART OF ANCIENT MEXICO. 527 



best part of what he describes. Though he denounces the figures of 

 Gomora as eight times too large, his own remain plainly extravagant : 

 for instance, the number and population of the valley cities which he 

 gives would be more than the natural conditions of the country could 

 support. One hundred and thirty-eight years after the conquest 

 Thomas Gage confessed himself sorely puzzled to account for the dis- 

 appearance of these cities as described ; and Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, in 

 his "Houses and House-Life of the Aborigines," even rejects the idea 

 of their actual existence. Mr. Morgan, I might say, discredits these 

 three authors in nearly everything except the main acts of the Span- 

 iards, and these, he says, are all that can be accepted as historical, 

 while "the descriptions of Indian society and government are im- 

 aginary and delusive." 



I was glad to see that Mr. David A. Wells, in the April, 1886, 

 number of this magazine, took the same view. He says that the popu- 

 lar idea of the civilization of ancient Mexico has very little founda- 

 tion, and the fascinating narrations of Prescott as well as the Spanish 

 chronicles from which he drew his so-called historic data, are little 

 other than the merest romance, not much more worthy, in fact, of re- 

 spect and credence than the equally fascinating stories of ' Sindbad the 

 Sailor.' And in defense of this conclusion he calls attention, among 

 other things, to the fact that the relics in the Museum of Mexico, 

 which are probably the best collection of the remains of the so-called 

 Aztec people that ever has been gathered, are very little better than 

 those from the Western mounds and some of the Indian tribes of the 

 United States. 



Though it is a harder task to impeach the motives and work of 

 Bernal Diaz than those of Cortes and Gomora, we must nevertheless 

 consider that his original manuscript slumbered unpublished in private 

 hands for fifty years after his death, and then was printed for the first 

 time in Spain under a censorship decree by Alonzo Remon, a Fran- 

 ciscan priest. Brasseur de Bourbourg says he saw the original manu- 

 script in Guatemala ; and Scherzer, who also saw it there, informs us 

 that the text, as published, is very incorrect. Moreover, in Riva- 

 deneyra's " Historiadores Primitivos de Indias," torn, ii, we find that 

 the above edition of Padre Remon, first appeared in 1675 in Guatemala, 

 although it was printed in 1632 ! Thereupon, Senor Fuentes, a de- 

 scendant of Bernal Diaz, said that " it contained in some parts more 

 and in others less than my great-grandfather wrote." He added, also, 

 that the title on the original cover, which the family have preserved 

 and kept in sight, is simply " Ancianidad Manuscrito," and not " His- 

 toria Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana, por el Capitan 

 Bernal Diaz del Castilo, un de los Conquistadores." We learn also 

 from the above authority that the inaccuracy commences at the very 

 beginning of the narrative, for the opening words are not those given 

 in the printed edition. 



