HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



123 



None of them doubt that the Toltecan nation was 

 very ancient. It appears from the hiftories of the Che- 

 chemecas, that they did not arrive in Anahuac until af- 

 ter the ruin of the Toltecas, whofe buildings they met 

 with in their travels, and remains of whom they found 

 on the banks of the Mexican lakes, and other places. 

 In this point Torquemada, Betancourt, and Boturini are 

 agreed. Acofta and Gomara make no mention of the 

 Toltecas, becaufe perhaps thofe authors whom they con- 

 futed omitted to fpeak of them, as their knowledge of 

 them was but little and obfcure. 



With refpeft to the time of their arrival in Anahuac, 

 Torquemada fays, in book III. of his hiftory, that it 

 happened in the year 700 of the vulgar era; but from 

 what he writes in book I. it appears to have happened 

 in 648. Boturini makes them one century more ancient, 

 as he believed that in 660 Ixtlalcuechahuac, the fecond 

 king of that nation, was reigning in Tula. From their 

 pictures we know, that they left Huehuetlapallan in the 

 year I Tecpatl; that, after having travelled one hun- 

 dred and four years, they fettled in Tollantzinco, and 

 then in Tula ; and that their monarchy commencing in 

 the year VII Acatl lafted three hundred and eighty-four 

 years. After comparing thefe epochs of the Toltecas 

 with thofe of the Chechemecas, their fuccelTors, we are 

 perfuaded that the departure of the former from Hue- 

 huetlapallan happened in 544, and that their monarchy 

 began in the year 667. Whoever will trace back to- 

 wards that time, the feries of Mexican years contrafted 

 with Chriftian years, fet forth at the end of our firfl: 

 volume, will find the year 544 of the vulgar era to have 

 been I Tecpatl, and the year 667 to have in like man- 

 ner been VII Acatl. There is no reafon to anticipate 

 thefe epochs, nor can they be poftponed without con- 

 founding 



V 



