347 



tion. The names given to the cities which they 

 built were the names of places which their an- 

 cestors inhabited ; their laws, their annals, their 

 chronology, the order of their sacrifices, were 

 modelled on the knowledge they had acquired 

 in their primitive country. But the apes and 

 the tigers, which figure among the hieroglyphics 

 of the days, and in the Mexican tradition of the 

 four ages or destructions of the Sun, do not in- 

 habit the northern part of New-Spain, and the 

 north-west coast of America. Consequently the 

 signs ozomatli and ocelotl render it singularly 

 probable, that the zodiacs of the Toltecks, the 

 Aztecks, the Monguls, the Thibetans, and so 

 many other nations now separated by a vast ex- 

 tent of country, originated on one and the same 

 point of the ancient continent. 



The lunar mansions of the Hindoos, in which 

 we also find an ape, a serpent, a tail of a dog, 

 and the head of an antelope, or of a sea-monster, 

 exhibit still other signs, the names of which re- 

 mind us of the calli, acatl, tecpatl, and ollin, of 

 the Mexican calendar. 



