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the use of skins, tanned and prepared, preceded 

 that of paper : the Toltecks, at least, seem al- 

 ready to have employed hieroglyphical painting 

 at that remote era, when they inhabited the 

 northern provinces, the climate of which is un- 

 fit for the cultivation of the agave. 



Among the Mexican people, the figures and 

 symbolic characters were not traced on separate 

 leaves. Whatever was the substance employed 

 for manuscripts, they were seldom destined to 

 form rolls ; but were almost always folded in 

 zigzag, in a particular manner, like the mounts 

 of our fans. Two tablets of light wood were 

 pasted at the ends, one at top, the other at bot- 

 tom, so that, before the painting was unfolded, 

 the manuscript had the most perfect resem- 

 blance with our bound books. By this arrange- 

 ment, on opening a Mexican manuscript as we 

 open our books, we can see only half of the cha- 

 racters at one time, those which are painted on 

 the same side of the skin, or paper of maguey : 

 to examine the whole of the pages, if the different 

 folds of a band, which is often twelve or fifteen 

 metres in length, can be called pages, we must 

 extend the whole manuscript first from the left to 

 the right, and then from the right to the left. In 

 this respect the Mexican paintings are perfectly 

 similar to the Siamese manuscripts, preserved in 

 the public library at Paris, which are also folded 

 in zigzag. 



m 2 



