32 



analogies we have just indicated are not acciden- 

 tal, and that it is not uninteresting- to the philo- 

 sophical history of man, to see the same fictions 

 spread from Etruria and Latium to Thibet, and 

 thence to the ridge of the Cordilleras of Mexico. 

 Beside the tradition of the four suns, and the 

 customs which we have already described*, the 

 Cod. Vatican, anon., No. 3738, contains several 

 curious figures. Of these we shall mention, 

 fol. 4, the chichiuhalqueliuitl, tree of milk, or 

 celestial tree, that distils milk from the extremity 

 of its branches, and around which are seated in- 

 fants, who have expired a few days after their 

 birth; fol. 5, a jaw tooth, perhaps of a mastodonte, 

 weighing three pounds, given in 1564, by P. Rios, 

 to the Viceroy Don Lewis de Velasco ; fol. 8, the 

 volcano Cotcitepetl, speaking mountain, celebrated 

 for the penance of Quetzalcohuatl, and designated 

 by a mouth and a tongue, which are the hiero- 

 glyphics of speech ; fol. 10, the pyramid of Cho- 

 lula ; and fol. 57, the seven chiefs of the seven 

 Mexican tribes, clothed with rabbits' skins, and 

 issuing from the seven caverns of Chicomoztoc. 

 From sheet 68 to sheet 93, this manuscript con- 

 tains copies of hieroglyphical paintings composed 

 after the conquest ; we see natives hung upon 

 trees, holding the cross in their hand ; soldiers 



* Plate XIV, vol. xiii, p. 201. 



