1887.] dJoJ [Brinton. 



shells." * The description of other buildings, equally wondrous, 

 have been lovingly preserved by the ancient songs.f What a 

 grief that our worthy friend, M. Charnay, digging awa}^ in 1880 

 on the Coatepec, at the head of a gang of fort3--five men, as he 

 tells us,| unearthed no sign of these ancient glories, in which, 

 for one, he full}' believes ! But, alas 1 I fear that they are to bo 

 sought nowhere out of the golden realm of fancy and mythical 

 dreaming. 



Nor, in that happj^ age, was the land unworthy sucli a glorious 

 city. Where now the neglected corn-patches suiround the 

 shabby huts of Tula, in the good old time " the crops of maize 

 never failed, and each ear was as long as a man's arm ; the 

 cotton burst its pods, not white onl}-, but spontaneously ready 

 dyed to the hand in brilliant scarlet, green, blue and j^ellow ; 

 the gourds were so large that they could not be clasped in the 

 arms ; and birds of brilliant plumage nested on every tree 1 " 



The subjects of Quetzalcoatl, the Toltecs, were not less mar- 

 velously qualified. They knew the virtues of plants and could 

 read the forecasts of the stars ; they could trace the veins of 

 metals in the mountains, and discern the deposits of precious 

 stones by the fine vapor which they emit ; they were orators, 

 poets and magicians ; so swift were they that they could at 

 once be in the place they wished to reach ; as artisans their skill 

 was unmatched, and they were not subject to the attacks of 

 disease. 



The failure and end of all this goodly time came about by a 

 battle of the gods, by a contest between Tezcatlipoca and Huit- 

 zilopochtli on the one hand, and Quetzalcoatl on the other. 

 Quetzalcoatl refused to make the sacrifices of human beings as 

 required by Huitzilopochtli, and the latter, with Tezcatlipoca, 

 set about the destruction of Tula and its people. This was the 



* Tlie most liighly-colored descriptions of the mythical Tuhx are io be found in the 

 third and tontli book of Sahagun's Historia dc Nitcva Etfparia, in the Annies dc Cuaiihti- 

 tlan, and in the various writings of Ixtlilxochitl. Later authors, such as Veytia, Tor- 

 quemada, etc., have copied from these. I.xtlilxochitl speaks of tlie "legions of fables" 

 about Tulan and Quetzalcoatl which even in his day were still current ("otras tresci- 

 eutas fabulas (jue aun todavia corren," Hduehncs Ilislwicas, in Jvingsborough, Mexico, 

 Vol. ix, p. 33l>). 



t In the collection of Ancient Knlmatl Poeui.s, which forms the seventh volume of my 

 Library of Aboriginal American Literature, p. 101, I have printed the original text of one 

 of the old songs recalling the glories of Tula, with its "house of beams," huapalcuUi, and 

 its " house of plumed serpents," coatlaquetzaUi, attributed to Quetzalcoatl. 



X Les Anciennes Villcs da yuuvcau Mundc, p. 84 (Paris, 1885). 



