63 



persons and sites. I am inclined to think, that 

 the picture, which Siguenza communicated to 

 Gemelli, is a copy made after the conquest, either 

 by a native, or the descendant of a Spaniard and 

 a Mexican. The painter has no doubt avoided 

 following the incorrect forms of the original ; 

 he has imitated with scrupulous exactness the 

 hieroglyphics of the names, and the cycles ; but 

 he has altered the proportions of the human fi- 

 gures, the drapery of which he has formed in a 

 manner analogous to that we have found in other 

 Mexican paintings *. 



The following are the principal events indi- 

 cated in the 32d plate, according to Siguenza's 

 explanation, to which we shall add a few inci- 

 dents taken from the historical annals of the 

 Mexicans. 



The history begins by the Deluge of Coxcox, or 

 the fourth destruction of the world, which, accord- 

 ing to the Azteck cosmogony, terminates the 

 fourth of the great cycles, atonatiuh, the age 

 water -j~. This cataclysm took place, according 

 to the two received chronological systems, one 

 thousand four hundred and seventeen, or eigh- 

 teen thousand and twenty-eight years after the 

 beginning of the age of earth, tlaltonatiuh. 

 The enormous difference of these numbers ought 



* Plate 14, No. 5 and 7. 

 t See above, page 23. 



