HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



115 



country of Huehuetlapallan^ how the folar year exceeded 

 the civil one by which they reckoned, about fix hours, 

 they regulated it by interpofmg the intercalary day once 

 in the four years ; which they did, more than one hun* 

 dred years before the Chriflian era. He fays belides, 

 that in the year 660, under the reign of htlalcuechahuac^ 

 in Tula, a celebrated adronomer called Huematzin^ af- 

 fembled, by the king's confent^, all the wife men of the 

 nation ; and with them painted that famous book called 

 Teoamoxtli or Divine Book, in which were reprefented, 

 in very plain figures, the origin of the Indians, their dif- 

 perfion after the confufion of tongues at Babel, their 

 journey in Afia, their firft fettlements upon the Conti- 

 nent of America, the founding of the kingdom of Tula, 

 and their progrefs till that time. There were defcribed 

 the heavens, the planets, the conftellations, the Toltecan 

 calendar with its cycles, the mythological transformations, 

 in which were included their moral philofophy, and the 

 myfteries of their deities concealed by hieroglyphics from 

 common underdandings, together with all that apper- 

 tained to their religion and manners. The above men- 

 tioned author adds, that that eclipfe of the fun Vv^hich 

 happened at the death of our Saviour, was marked in 

 their paintings, in the year 7. Tochtli (b) ; and that 

 fome learned Spaniards, well acquainted with the hidory 

 and the paintings of the Toltecas, having compared their 

 chronology with ours, found that they reckoned from the 



creation 



(h) All thofe who have ftudlcd carefully the hiftory of the nations of Ana- 

 huac, know very well that thofe people were accuflomed to mark eclipfes, co- 

 mets, and other phsenomena of the heavens, in their paintings. Upon reading 

 Boturini 1 fet about comparing the Toltecan years with ours, and I found the 

 34th year of Chrift, or 30th of our era, to be the 7. T ochtli: but I did this merely 

 to fatisfy my own curiofity, and I do not mean either to confirm or give credit 

 to the things told us by that author. 



