23 



ber the time, when new colonies of monkeys set- 

 tled themselves in such and such a valley. Did 

 the tradition of the five ages contain a trait of 

 the history of animals ? Could it designate a 

 year, in which hurricanes, and earthquakes 

 caused by volcanoes, induced the monkeys to 

 make incursions into the mountains of Anahuac ? 

 In this cycle of tempests, two men only survived 

 the catastrophe, by fleeing to a cavern, as at the 

 end of the preceding age. 



Fourth cycle. The age of water, Atonatiuh, 

 the duration of which is 10x400+8=4008 years. 

 A great inundation, which began the year ce calli, 

 the day 4 water ( nahui alt), destroyed mankind. 

 This is the last of the great revolutions, which 

 the world has undergone. Men were transformed 

 into fish, except one man and one woman, who 

 saved themselves in the trunk of an ahahuite, or 

 cupressus distieha. The drawing represents the 

 goddess of water, called Matlalcueje, or Chal- 

 chiuhcueje, and considered as the companion of 

 Tlaloc, descending towards the earth. Coxcox, 

 the Noah of the Mexicans, and his wife Xochi- 

 quetzal, are seated in a trunk of a tree covered 

 with leaves, and floating amidst the waters. 



These four ages, which are also designated 

 under the name of suns, contain together eigh- 

 teen thousand and twenty-eight years ; that is 

 to say, six thousand years more than the four 



