29 



signs. It is impossible, that the fourth destruc- 

 tion should have taken place in the year colli, 

 if the third happened in the year tecpatl. I can- 

 not guess what has caused this error • it may 

 however have been only in appearance, and in 

 the historical monuments, which have been trans- 

 mitted to us, there may have been no mention of 

 the small number of years employed by nature 

 for each regeneration. The Hindoos distinguish 

 the interval between two cataclysms, and the 

 duration of each ; in the same manner, in the 

 fragment of Ixtlilxochitl, we read, that the first 

 catastrophe is seven hundred and seventy-six 

 years distant from the second: but that the 

 famine, which destroyed the giants, lasted thir- 

 teen years, or the quarter of a cycle. In the two 

 chronological systems which we have just men- 

 tioned, the epocha of the creation of the world, 

 or rather the beginning of the great periods, is 

 the year presided by tochtli ; which sign was to 

 the Mexicans, what Aries was to the Persians. 

 In every nation astronomy indicates the position 

 of the Sun, at the moment when the stars begin 

 their course ; and we have already shown it to be 

 probable, when speaking * of the relations ob- 

 served between the fiction of the ages and the 

 signification of the hieroglyphic ollin, that tochtli 

 corresponds to one of the solstitial points. 



* Vol xiii. p. 352, p. 402, 



