RELATIONS OF ARCHEOLOGY 521 



as far as abstract ideas; they had no spiritual conceptions. To 

 designate the spirit, they used in Nahua the word ehecatl, while in 

 Maya the word ik: both terms denote the air. The air is undoubtedly 

 the least tangible of material bodies; but the Indians could feel it 

 as it gently fanned their faces. If I may be permitted the expression, 

 I shall say that their spirits were corporeal. 



All was born of the Milky Way, and all returned to it. From 

 this materialistic pantheism and from this idolatry of stone gods, 

 there had to come at length an absurd fanaticism, a black fatalism, 

 and a dreadful worship of blood. 



But the adoration of the three stars brought along with it a 

 marvelous chronology. The Nahua priests, and following their 

 example the Maya, combined in a truly amazing manner the cal- 

 culations of Venus, the Sun and the Moon, forming a perfect cycle 

 system. It is a matter to cause us wonder and surprise, how, destitute 

 of adequate instruments, and only through the constant observa- 

 tions which they conducted by night from their elevated teocallis, 

 were they enabled to state precisely the synodical revolutions of 

 Venus, which they fixed at 584 days; and adding together five 

 of these revolutions, they found that they were equal in length 

 to eight solar years: hence they had a basis of calculation for the 

 formation of the different cycles. But there yet remains more to 

 tell: as they observed that the calculation of the synodical revo- 

 lution of Venus was not exact, being in reality 583.92, they 

 made the corresponding correction, for which they changed the 

 octennial feast called Atamalcualiztli, which is proved by the paint- 

 ings of the Borgian Codex. 



Centuries prior to this, they had introduced the leap-year: they 

 had noticed that there was an error in calculation, and so they added 

 either sixty-five days in every great cycle of 1040 years, or thirteen 

 in every Xiuhmolpilli of fifty-two, or again one in every four, ac- 

 cording to the various methods of intercalation: and in the year 

 1454 of the common era, in the reign of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, 

 the Mexicans corrected this error, as is proved by the above-men- 

 tioned Borgian Codex, as well as by the stone cylinder existing in 

 the Hall of Monoliths of the National Museum of Mexico. 



I am not in a position to affirm whether, after the conquest of 

 Mexico, the system of the Indians, having become known in Europe, 

 influenced the astronomer Luis Lilio and contributed towards the 

 making of the Gregorian correction in 1582, one hundred and twenty- 

 eight years after the Mexicans had already adopted it. The fact 

 remains, however, that the European calculation, actually in vogue 

 at the present day, is not so perfect as was that of the Indians. 

 According to this latter a leap-year was omitted every 130 years, 

 as we see by the Bologna Codex, or eight days at the end of every 



