12 



THE MEXICAN ZODIAC. 



maximum, like the Orinoco, in the month of August.* The 

 Nile is two months later, either on account of some local 

 circumstances in the climate of Abyssinia, or of the length 

 of its course, from the country of Berber, or 17'5 of lati- 

 tude, to the bifurcation of the delta. The Arabian geogra* 

 phers assert, that in Sennaar and in Abyssinia the Nile 

 begins to swell in the month of April (nearly as the Orinoco) ; 

 the rise, however, does not become sensible at Cairo till 

 toward the summer solstice; and the water attains its greatest 

 height at the end of the month of September. t The river 

 keeps at the same level till the middle of October ; and is at 

 its minimum in April and May, a period when the rivers of 

 Guiana begin to swell anew*. It may be seen from this 

 rapid statement, that, notwithstanding the retardation caused 

 by the form of the natural channels, and by local climatic 

 circumstances, the great phenomenon of the oscillations of 

 the rivers of the torrid zone is everywhere the same. In 

 the two zodiacs vulgarly called the Tartar and Chaldean, or 

 Egyptian (in the zodiac which contains the sign of the Itat, 

 and in that which contains those of the Fishes and Aqua- 

 rius), particular constellations are consecrated to the 

 periodical overflowings of the rivers. Real cycles, divisions 

 of time, have been gradually transformed into divisions of 

 space ; but the generality of the physical phenomena of the 

 risings seems to prove that the zodiac which has been trans- 

 mitted to us by the Greeks, and which, by the precession of 

 the equinoxes, becomes an historical monument of high 

 antiquity, may have taken birth far from Thebes, and from 

 the sacred valley of the Nile. In the zodiacs of the New 

 AVorld in the Mexican, for instance, of which we discover 

 the vestiges in the signs of the days, and the periodical 

 series which they compose there are also signs of rain and 

 of inundation corresponding to the Chou (Eat) of the 

 Chinese;}; and Thibetan cycle of Tse, and to the Fishes and 

 Aquarius of the dodecatemorion. These two Mexican signs 

 are Water (Atl) and Cipactli, the sea-monster furnished with 



* Nearly forty or fifty days after the summer solstice. 



f Nearly eighty or ninety days after the summer solstice. 



J The figure of water itself is often substituted for that of the Rat 

 (Aruicola) in the Tartar zodiac. The Rat takes the place of Aquarius, 

 {Gaubil, Ob*. Mathtm., vol. iu, p. 33.) 



