THE MEXICAN MESSIAH. 105 



only canoes dug out of the solid timber. When Cortes was build- 

 ing the brigantines with which he attacked the city of Mexico from 

 the lake, he had to manufacture the tar he required from such 

 suitable trees as he could find. Quetzatcoatl may have used ser- 

 pents' skins for a similar purpose, and such use would imply that 

 the vessel in which he sailed away was not a mere canoe, but a 

 built-up boat. If he was really St. Brendan, nothing is more likely 

 than that he should seek for a substitute for tar or pitch in skins 

 of some sort. Coming from the west coast of Ireland, he would 

 be familiar with the native curracles, coracles, or hide-covered 

 boats then in common use (and not yet wholly discarded) for 

 coasting purposes, and sometimes for voyages to the coasts of Brit- 

 ain and the continent of Europe. Some of these were of large 

 size, and capable of carrying a small mast, the body being a stout 

 framework of ash ribs, covered with hides of oxen, sometimes of 

 threefold thickness. It may have been a vessel of this kind which 

 Quetzatcoatl constructed for his return voyage, or it may be that 

 he employed the serpents' skins for the protection of the seams of 

 his built-up boat in lieu of tar or pitch. In any case the tradition 

 makes him out a navigator and boat-builder of some experience, 

 and if he were really St. Brendan he would have had a knowledge 

 of the Irish mode of constructing and navigating sea-going crafts, 

 and would probably have employed serpents' skins, the best Mexi- 

 can substitute for ox-hide, in either of the ways suggested. 



In the Mexican tradition there is no certain reference to Quet- 

 zatcoatl having with him companions of his own country, though 

 in the story of St. Brendan the Irish saint is given such compan- 

 ions both in his going out and coming back. But the Mexican 

 tradition nowhere negatives, either by implication or directly, 

 that Quetzatcoatl had companions of his own race, and it seems 

 in the highest degree improbable that he could have crossed the 

 Atlantic both ways alone and unassisted by comrades. It may, 

 therefore, be supposed that the fact of Quetzatcoatl having at- 

 tendants of the same religion and nationality as himself was a 

 detail omitted from an account which chiefly concerned itself with 

 the great figure of Quetzatcoatl himself. 



It would be presumptuous to claim that the identity of Quet- 

 zatcoatl with St. Brendan has been completely established in this 

 essay, but it may reasonably be submitted that there is no violent 

 inconsistency involved in the theory herein advanced, and an ex- 

 amination of the evidence upon which it is based discloses many 

 remarkable coincidences in favor of the opinion that the Mexican 

 Messiah may have been the Irish saint. Beyond this it would not 

 be safe to go, and it is not probable that future discoveries will 

 enable the identity of Quetzatcoatl to be more clearly traced. 

 Gentleman's Magazine. 



