277 



with that of those languages rich in words, and 

 in grammatical forms, which we find among 

 nations, whose actual mass of ideas is not cor- 

 respondent to the multiplicity of signs adapted 

 to explain them. Those languages so rich and 

 flexible, those modes of intercalation which sup- 

 pose an accurate knowledge of the duration of 

 the astronomical year, are perhaps only the re- 

 mains of an inheritance, transmitted to them by 

 nations heretofore civilized, but since relapsed 

 into barbarism. 



The monks and other Spanish writers, who 

 visited Mexico a short time after the conquest, 

 gave but vague and often contradictory notions 

 of the different calendars in use among the na- 

 tions of the Tolteck and Azteck race. We find 

 these notions in the works of Gomara, Valades, 

 Acosta, and Torquemada. This last writer, not- 

 withstanding his superstition, has transmitted to 

 us in his Monarquia Indiana, a collection of im- 

 portant facts, which discovers an accurate know- 

 ledge of local circumstances. He lived fifty years 

 among the Mexicans : he arrived at the city of 

 Tenochtitlan at a period, when the natives were 

 yet in possession of a great number of historical 

 paintings ; and when, before the house of the 

 Marquis del Valle * in the Plaza Mayor, were 



* See page 7, plate 3d, folio edition. 



