197 



bled in the temples ; the confession of sins made 

 by the penitent; those religious associations,, 

 similar to our convents of men and women ; the 

 universal belief, that white men, with long 

 beards and sanctity of manners, had changed 

 the religion and political system of nations ; all 

 these circumstances had led the priests, who ac- 

 companied the Spanish army at the time of the 

 conquest, to the belief, that at some very distant 

 epocha Christianity had been preached in the 

 New Continent. Some learned Mexicans^ have 

 imagined, that the Apostle St. Thomas was the 

 mysterious personage, high priest of Tula, whom 

 the Cholulans acknowledged under the name of 

 Quetzalcoatl. It is no way doubtful, that Nes- 

 torianism, mingled with the dogmata of the 

 Bouddhistes and the Shamans^, spread through 

 Mantchou Tartary into the north-east of Asia : 

 we may therefore suppose, with some appearance 

 of reason, that christian ideas have been com- 

 municated by the same means to the Mexican 

 nations, especially to the inhabitants of that 

 northern region, from which the Toltecks emi- 

 grated, and which we must consider as the offi- 

 cina virorum of the New World. 

 This supposition would be even more admissi- 



* Siguenza, Opera ined. Eguiara, Bib!.. Mexicana, p. 78. 

 f Langles, Rituel des Tar tares Manchoux, p. 9 et 14. 

 GEORGI vJlphab. tibetanum, p. 298. 



