442 REVIEWS—A NEW HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 
powder which gave to dilute soda ley, 9°5 per cent. of its weight as 
soluble silica, while the residue had nearly the composition of a 
potash feldspar ; analysis giving me silica 73°02, alumina 18°31, lime 
0°93, magnesia 0°87, potash 5°55, soda 0°89 = 99°57. (See Report 
for 1857, p- 198.) It would appear that under the influence of the 
heat of the intrusive rock this argillaceous matter combines with 
lime, magnesia and oxyd of iron to form the silicate whose analysis 
has been given above, a portion of alumina being set free in a soluble 
form. 
REVIEWS. 
A New History of the Conquest of Mexico, in which Las Casas’ 
Denunciations of the Popular Historians of that War are fully 
Vindicated. By Robert Alexander Wilson, Counsellor at Law, 
Author of “Mexico and its Religion,’ &c. Philadelphia: James 
Challen and Son. 1859. 
The idea implied by the designation of a new history of the Con- 
quest of Mexico is set forth in unmistakeable language in the volume 
now before us, ere we have even got the length of the preliminary 
chapter. It is a book written mainly to show the fallacy of Prescott’s 
work on the same subject, though the author has a higher aim before 
himself than that of a mere eradicator of previous errors. He is pre- 
pared not only to displace, but to replace; and, having reduced the fancied. 
Aztec civilization of Ancient Mexico to a fable, its sovereign cacique, 
Montezuma, to a mere Indian chief, and his Aztec hosts to a horde 
of Indians, little, if at all, in advance of the famous Iroquois league 
thai withstood Champlain and the chivalry of France in the seven- 
teenth century; he next proceeds to establish an ante-Columbian 
civilization in the New World, the direct product of Phoenician 
civilization, and consequently dating back to centuries far beyond the 
reach of Aztec or Toltec traditions. In a letter to his publishers, 
attached to the volume as “‘the Author’s Explanation,” he refers to 
the death of the distinguished historian of the Conquests of Cortes 
and Pizarro, and adds :—-‘‘The most kindly relations existed between 
us in his lifetime, though ever taking diametrically opposite grounds 
on all Spanish questions ; he assuming that the books and MSS. sent 
