22 ' * 



governed by the sign ce tecpatl, the day nahui 

 quiahuitl. As the birds alone were able to es- 

 cape the general conflagration, tradition states, 

 that all men were transformed into birds, except 

 one man, and one woman, who saved themselves 

 in the recess of a cavern. 



Third cycle. The age of wind, or air, Ehe- 

 catonatiuh. Its duration is 10x400 + 10=4010 

 years. The catastrophe took place on the day 

 4 wind (nahui ehecatl) of the year ce tecpatl. 

 The drawing represents four times the hierogly- 

 phic of the air or the wind, ehecatl. Men perish- 

 ed by hurricanes ; and some were transformed 

 into apes. These animals did not appear in 

 Mexico before this third age. I am ignorant 

 who is the divinity, that descends on the Earth 

 armed with a sickle. May it not be Quetzal- 

 cohuatl, the god of the air ? and may not the 

 sickle signify, that the hurricane roots up the 

 trees, as if they had been felled ? I doubt, how- 

 ever, whether the yellow stripes indicate, as the 

 Spanish commentator pretends, the form of 

 clouds driven by the tempest. Monkeys are in 

 general less frequent in the warm part of Mexi- 

 co, than in South America. These animals un- 

 dertake distant migrations, when, driven by 

 hunger, or the severity of the weather, they find 

 themselves compelled to abandon their primitive 

 abode. I know countries in the mountainous 

 parts of Peru, the inhabitants of which remem- 



