l48 Mr. Ranking on the Ruins of Patenque, 



' Remark, — ^These three persons, and nearly all the others 

 represented in the seventeen plates, have remarkably high 

 skulls and large aquiline prominent noses * ; and some of them 

 have projecting under lips. In a dissertation on this subject, 

 (Humboldt's Researches, vol. ii. 130,) it is said, that " this is 

 also the essential character of the hieroglyphical pictures pre- 

 served at Vienna, Rome, and the palace of the Viceroy at 

 Mexico." The greatest resemblance to any known people is 

 to the Turks. Among these plates the features of the man 

 upon the medal in No. ix. f, may be those of a Calmuc ; and 

 many of the heads upon the border-writing of these pictures 

 are rather flat than long. According to American history, the 

 Toltecs left their native Tula, in Asia, A.D. 544, and being 

 driven by famine from Anahuac, A.D. 1052, they settled in 

 Guatemala and Yucatan. — {Conquest by the Mongols, p. 269.) 

 From 506 to 545 Tartary was in the most convulsed state 

 possible, and the Turks, whose head-quarters were near the 

 sources of the Irtish, first rose to fame. This is now the 

 head-quarters of the Calmucs. The Geougen Tartars resided 

 at l^ula, (near Lake Baikal J in the year 520. In 555 the 

 Turks had conquered all the north of Asia. Yakutz was 

 named Northern Turquestan. Leao-tong was conquered, and 

 they describe sledges drawn with dogs, as in Kamtschatka. — 

 (Gibbon, ch. xlii. D'Herbelot, iv. 89, et seq. De Guines, vol. 

 i. partii. p. Iviii. 352, iii. 7.) The 2\rks had been the most 

 despised portion of the slaves of the Great Khan of the 

 Geougen ; but in a decisive battle the nation of the Geougen 

 were nearly exterminated by the Turks about A.D. 545. The 

 throne of Bertezena, the first leader of the Turks, the founder 

 of which nation, like Romulus, having been suckled by a 

 wolf, was turned towards the east, and a golden wolf upon tlie 

 top of a spear seemed to guard the entrance of his tent. (A 

 skeleton of a coyote, or American wolf, was found in a tomb 

 in Mexico, in 1791, and there were in that city a chapel and 

 a congregation of priests of the sacred wolf. Humboldt, 

 Res, ii. 48. 319.) If we are strong, say the Turks, we ad- 

 vance and conquer ; if feeble, we retire and are concealed. 



* See two of these heads in the: preceding plate, letter C, 

 I See the plate, D. 



