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The volumes, which the first missionaries of 

 New Spain improperly carled Mexican books, 

 contained notions on a great number of very 

 different subjects ; they consisted of historical 

 annals of the Mexican empire, rituals indicating 

 the month and the day on which sacrifices were 

 to be made to particular divinities, cosmogonical 

 and astrological representations, papers relating 

 to lawsuits, documents respecting the divisions 

 of property in a district, lists of tributes payable 

 at certain periods of the year, genealogical tables 

 according to which inheritances or the rule of 

 succession in families was regulated, calendars 

 showing the intercalations of the civil year and 

 religious year, and paintings indicating the pains 

 and penalties, which the judges were to inflict 

 for crimes. My travels in different parts of 

 America and Europe procured me the advantage 

 of examining a greater number of Mexican ma- 

 nuscripts, than Zoega, Clavigero, Gama, the 

 Abbe Hervas, the ingenious author of the Let- 

 ter e Americane, Count Einaldo Carli, and other 

 learned persons, who, since Boturini, have writ- 

 ten on these monuments of the ancient civiliza- 

 tion of America. In the valuable collection pre- 

 served in the palace of the Viceroy at Mexico, I 

 saw fragments of paintings relative to each of the 

 subjects I have just enumerated. 



We cannot avoid being struck with the great 

 resemblance, which we observe between the 



