THE PYRAMIDS. 



151 



arts oflife, as well as their simple worship of the sun, 

 they seem to be assimilated to the Natchez of Louisiana. 



Other tribes, the principal of which was the Acolhu- 

 ans, followed. Under all their distinct appellations, yet 

 speaking at most dialects of the same language, it seems 

 probable that all these tribes were offsets from that 

 teeming hive of human beings of which the unknown seat 

 lay somewhere to the northward, in the unexplored coun- 

 try to the north and east of California, between the west- 

 ern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the great Pacific 

 Ocean.* 



.The Alcolhuan monarchy lasted for several centuries, 

 till the rise of the Mexicans or Aztecs, the last of seven 

 tribes of the Nahuatlacs, the people who had emigrated 

 to Anahuac before the Acolhuans, put an end to it. 



It appears that these seven tribes had departed from 

 their northern home in company ; but that after three 

 considerable halts, disagreement produced a separation 

 of the Aztec tribe from their brethren. The six pro- 

 ceeded to the south, and formed their settlements ; while 

 many years elapsed before the seventh, oracle led, came 

 to a final pause in the valley of Mexico, where they 

 founded their principal city on the site of the present 

 capital, amid the waters of the lake Tezcuco. Like most 

 of the nations whose entry into the country I have thus 

 briefly noticed, the Mexicans adopted as much of the 

 agriculture, arts, and demi-civilization of the Toltecs as 

 was extant, and conformed to their astronomical division 

 of time, mythology, and probably to many of their reli- 

 gious observances and customs. 



During their period of a hundred years' wandering in 

 Anahuac, before making their final settlement, the Mex- 

 icans are stated to have succumbed to the power of the 



A.D. 



* Emigration of the Toltecs into Anahuac ... 607 

 Termination of the Toltec monarchy - - - 1051 

 Emigration of the Chechimecas ----- 1170 

 Emigration of the six trihes of the Nahuatlacs - - 1178 

 Then followed the Alcalhuans, with whom the Chechime- 

 cas coalesce. The Mexicans, the seventh tribe of the 

 Nahuatlacs, build Tenochtitlan in - 1325 



See Humboldt's Researches. 



