170 



events of its migration ; and it professes to have 

 quitted this country, the situation of which is 

 altogether unknown to us, in the year 544, at 

 the same period when the total ruin of the dy- 

 nasty of the Tsin had occasioned great com- 

 motions among the nations in the east of Asia. 

 This circumstance is very remarkable : moreover, 

 the names, which the Toltecks bestowed on the 

 cities they built, were those of the cities of the 

 northern country, which they had been compell- 

 ed to abandon ; from this circumstance the ori- 

 gin* of the Toltecks, the Cirimecks, the Acol- 

 huans, and the Aztecks, of those four nations 

 who spoke the same language, and who entered 

 successively, and by the same road into Mexico, 

 will be known, if we ever discover in the north 

 of America or Asia a people acquainted with the 

 names of Huehuetlapallan, Aztlan, Teocolhua- 

 can, Amaquemecan, Tehuajo, and Copalla. 



As far as the parallel of fifty-three leagues, the 

 temperature of the north-west coast of America 

 is milder than that of the eastern coasts ; we 

 might be led to think, therefore, that civilization 

 had anciently made some progress in this climate, 

 and even in higher latitudes. Even in our own 

 times we perceive, that in the fifty-seventh de- 

 gree, in Cox's Channel, and Norfolk Sound, 



* Clavigero, Storia di Messico, torn. 1, p. 126 \ torn. 4, 

 p. 29 and 46. 



