21 



the Globe on its issuing from Chaos, we cannot 

 doubt, but that, in both Americas, the enormous 

 fossil skeletons of animals spread over the surface 

 of the Earth, have had a great influence on my- 

 thological history. At St. Helen's Point, to the 

 north of Guayaquil, are enormous remains of un- 

 . known cetaceous animals. Peruvian traditions 

 also state, that a colony of giants, who mutually 

 destroyed each other, landed at this very point. 

 Bones of mastodontes, and of fossil elephants be- 

 longing to a species that has disappeared from 

 the surface of the Globe, abound in the kingdom 

 of New Granada, and on the ridge of the Mexi- 

 can Cordilleras *. The plain also, which at two 

 thousand seven hundred metres height extends 

 from Suacha to Santa Fe de Bogota, bears the 

 name of the Field of the Giants. It is probable, 

 the Hulmecks boasted, that their ancestors had 

 combated the giants on the fertile plain of Tlas- 

 cala, because we find on this spot molar teeth 

 of mastodontes and elephants, which in every 

 country the people take for teeth of men of co- 

 lossal stature. 



Second cycle. Its duration is 1 2 x 400 +4 =4804 

 years. This is the age of fire, Tletonatiuh, or 

 the red age, Tzonchichiltech. The god of fire, 

 Xiuhteuctli, descends on the Earth in the year 



* Cuvier, Mem. del'Iristit., Class of Physical and Mathem. 

 Sciences, year 7, p. 14. 



